Understanding equilibration times in closed quantum systems is essential for characterising their approach to equilibrium. Chaotic many-body systems are paradigmatic in this context: they are expected to thermalise according to the eigenstate thermalisation hypothesis and exhibit spectral properties well described by random matrix theory (RMT). While RMT successfully captures spectral correlations, its ability to provide quantitative predictions for equilibration timescales has remained largely unexplored. Here, we study equilibration within RMT using the framework of equilibration as dephasing, focusing on closed systems whose Hamiltonians are drawn from the Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE). We derive an analytical expression that approximates the average equilibration time of the GUE and show that it is independent of both the initial state and the choice of observable, a consequence of the rotational invariance of the GUE. Numerical simulations confirm our analytical expression and demonstrate that our approximation is in close agreement with the true average equilibration time of the GUE. We find that the equilibration time decreases with system size and vanishes in the thermodynamic limit. This unphysical result indicates that the true equilibration timescale of realistic chaotic many-body systems must be dominated by physical features not captured by random matrix ensembles -- the GUE in particular.
Understanding equilibration times in closed quantum systems is essential for characterising their approach to equilibrium. Chaotic many-body systems are paradigmatic in this context: they are expected to thermalise according to the eigenstate thermalisation hypothesis and exhibit spectral properties well described by random matrix theory (RMT). While RMT successfully captures spectral correlations, its ability to provide quantitative predictions for equilibration timescales has remained largely unexplored. Here, we study equilibration within RMT using the framework of equilibration as dephasing, focusing on closed systems whose Hamiltonians are drawn from the Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE). We derive an analytical expression that approximates the average equilibration time of the GUE and show that it is independent of both the initial state and the choice of observable, a consequence of the rotational invariance of the GUE. Numerical simulations confirm our analytical expression and demonstrate that our approximation is in close agreement with the true average equilibration time of the GUE. We find that the equilibration time decreases with system size and vanishes in the thermodynamic limit. This unphysical result indicates that the true equilibration timescale of realistic chaotic many-body systems must be dominated by physical features not captured by random matrix ensembles -- the GUE in particular.
Abstract We study the time dynamics of random density matrices generated by evolving the same pure state using a Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE) of Hamiltonians. We show that the spectral statistics of the resulting mixed state is well described by random matrix theory (RMT) and undergoes a crossover from the GOE to the Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE) for short and large times respectively. Using a semi-analytical treatment relying on a power series of the density matrix as a function of time, we find that the crossover occurs in a characteristic time that scales as the inverse of the Hilbert space dimension. The RMT results are contrasted with a paradigmatic model of many-body localization in the chaotic regime, where the GUE statistics is reached at large times, while for short times the statistics strongly depends on the peculiarity of the considered subspace.
Abstract In this article, using the principles of Random Matrix Theory (RMT) with Gaussian Unitary Ensemble (GUE), we give a measure of quantum chaos by quantifying Spectral From Factor (SFF) appearing from the computation of two point Out of Time Order Correlation function (OTOC) expressed in terms of square of the commutator bracket of quantum operators which are separated in time scale. We also provide a strict model independent bound on the measure of quantum chaos, −1/N (1 − 1/π) ≤ SFF ≤ 0 and 0 ≤ SFF ≤ 1/πN, valid for thermal systems with large and small number of degrees of freedom respectively. We have studied both the early and late behaviour of SFF to check the validity and applicability of our derived bound. Based on the appropriate physical arguments we give a precise mathematical derivation to establish this alternative strict bound of quantum chaos. Finally, we provide an example of integrability from GUE based RMT from Toda Lattice model to explicitly show the application of our derived bound on SFF to quantify chaos.
A bstract We present a comprehensive analytical study of a variation of the eigenvector ensemble initially proposed by Deutsch [1, 2] for the foundations of the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH). This ensemble, called the C -ensemble, incorporates additional system-dependent information, enabling the study of complex quantum systems beyond the universal predictions of Random Matrix Theory (RMT). Specifically, we focus on how system-specific details influence late-time behavior in correlation functions, such as the spectral form factor, and how explicit Hamiltonian corrections not captured by RMT can be included. We demonstrate the consistency of this ensemble with respect to the universal (Haar) results by showing that it defines a unitary 1-design for arbitrary systems and for strongly chaotic systems it becomes an approximated 2-design. Universal expressions for two- and four-point ensemble-averaged correlation functions are derived, revealing how system-dependent information is spectrally decoupled. Furthermore, we show that for small energy windows, the correlation functions defined by this ensemble reduce to the predictions made by the ETH.
Chaos and complexity entail an entropic and computational obstruction to describing a system, and thus are intrinsically difficult to characterize. In this paper, we consider time evolution by Gaussian Unitary Ensemble (GUE) Hamiltonians and analytically compute out-of-time-ordered correlation functions (OTOCs) and frame potentials to quantify scrambling, Haar-randomness, and circuit complexity. While our random matrix analysis gives a qualitatively correct prediction of the late-time behavior of chaotic systems, we find unphysical behavior at early times including an O(1) scrambling time and the apparent breakdown of spatial and temporal locality. The salient feature of GUE Hamiltonians which gives us computational traction is the Haar-invariance of the ensemble, meaning that the ensemble-averaged dynamics look the same in any basis. Motivated by this property of the GUE, we introduce k-invariance as a precise definition of what it means for the dynamics of a quantum system to be described by random matrix theory. Here,we envision that the dynamical onset of approximate k-invariance will be a useful tool for capturing the transition from early-time chaos, as seen by OTOCs, to late-time chaos, as seen by random matrix theory.
We present a systematic construction of probes into the dynamics of isospectral ensembles of Hamiltonians by the notion of Isospectral twirling, expanding the scopes and methods of ref. [1]. The relevant ensembles of Hamiltonians are those defined by salient spectral probability distributions. The Gaussian Unitary Ensembles (GUE) describes a class of quantum chaotic Hamiltonians, while spectra corresponding to the Poisson and Gaussian Diagonal Ensemble (GDE) describe non chaotic, integrable dynamics. We compute the Isospectral twirling of several classes of important quantities in the analysis of quantum many-body systems: Frame potentials, Loschmidt Echos, OTOCs, Entanglement, Tripartite mutual information, coherence, distance to equilibrium states, work in quantum batteries and extension to CP-maps. Moreover, we perform averages in these ensembles by random matrix theory and show how these quantities clearly separate chaotic quantum dynamics from non chaotic ones.
Phenomena in quantum chaotic systems such as spectral fluctuations are known to be described remarkably well by the random matrix theory (RMT) in small energy intervals and over large time scales. However, in exchange for analytical tractability, RMT has been constructed to leave out an important element of realistic physical systems { the notion of locality. Since quantum information propagates at a finite speed in a spatially-extended quantum chaotic system, there exists time scales before which RMT is effective. How do we describe the non-equilibrium quantum dynamics at intermediate timescales which are much longer than the local relaxation time but too short for RMT to apply? What are the signatures of many-body quantum chaotic systems beyond the description of RMT? In this thesis, we address these questions by analysing minimal models that incorporate a notion of locality and at the same time retain some analytical tractability of RMT. More specifically, we study Floquet quantum circuits that are random in space but periodic in time. These circuits consist of local and random quantum gates that act on a q-state `spin' at each site. After a brief review of classical chaos, quantum chaos, and quantum circuits in Chapter 1, we present three main results. In Chapter 2, we formulate a diagrammatical approach for computing ensemble averages of observables over random unitary circuits, and derive exact results on spectral statistics and dynamical observables for a Floquet circuit in the large-q limit. In Chapter 3, we further investigate the spectral statistics in spatiallyextended many-body quantum chaotic systems by computing the spectral form factor K(t) analytically and numerically. We show that K(t) follows the RMT description at times longer than the Thouless time tTh and identify the scaling of tTh at the large-q limit of a Floquet circuit. In Chapter 4, we discuss eigenstate correlations for spatially-extended many-body quantum chaotic systems, in terms of the statistical properties of matrix elements of local observables. While the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is known to give an excellent description of these quantities, the phenomenon of scrambling and the butterfly effect imply structure beyond ETH. We determine analytically and verify numerically the universal form of this structure at long distances and small eigenvalue separations for Floquet systems.