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arXiv:2605.30798

Eigenstate chaos in the presence of non-Abelian symmetries

Siddharth Jindal, Pavan Hosur

quant-phcond-mat.stat-mechhep-thSubmitted May 29, 2026• Announced Jun 1, 2026• 0 citations• Revised Jul 6, 2026 (v2)
v1 · May 29, 2026v2 · Jul 6, 2026
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Abstract

The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) posits that energy eigenstates encode local properties of the microcanonical ensemble. Motivated by recent interest in the physics of non-commuting conserved charges and the non-Abelian ETH, we study chaotic eigenstates in the presence of symmetries described by general compact Lie groups, such as SU(2). By applying non-Abelian symmetry resolution, we develop a non-Abelian microcanonical entropy and relate this entropy to the entanglement entropy of chaotic eigenstates. We find that microcanonical entropy is closely related to the symmetry-resolved entanglement entropy, which differs from conventional entanglement entropy by a universal logarithmic correction. Our results depend on the global Casimir charge, e.g. total spin. At finite charge density, we find a logarithmic enhancement to conventional entanglement entropy. At zero density, we find no such correction to entanglement entropy, but a logarithmic reduction to microcanonical entropy and symmetry-resolved entanglement entropy. We discuss the implications of our approach for non-Abelian eigenstate thermalization.

Comments
22+29 pages, 3 figures. (v2) added references

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The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) posits that energy eigenstates encode local properties of the microcanonical ensemble. Motivated by recent interest in the physics of non-commuting conserved charges and the non-Abelian ETH, we study chaotic eigenstates in the presence of symmetries described by general compact Lie groups, such as SU(2). By applying non-Abelian symmetry resolution, we develop a non-Abelian microcanonical entropy and relate this entropy to the entanglement entropy of chaotic eigenstates. We find that microcanonical entropy is closely related to the symmetry-resolved entanglement entropy, which differs from conventional entanglement entropy by a universal logarithmic correction. Our results depend on the global Casimir charge, e.g. total spin. At finite charge density, we find a logarithmic enhancement to conventional entanglement entropy. At zero density, we find no such correction to entanglement entropy, but a logarithmic reduction to microcanonical entropy and symmetry-resolved entanglement entropy. We discuss the implications of our approach for non-Abelian eigenstate thermalization.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) explains why nonintegrable quantum many-body systems thermalize internally if the Hamiltonian lacks symmetries. If the Hamiltonian conserves one quantity ("charge"), the ETH implies thermalization within a charge sector-in a microcanonical subspace. But quantum systems can have charges that fail to commute with each other and so share no eigenbasis; microcanonical subspaces may not exist. Furthermore, the Hamiltonian will have degeneracies, so the ETH need not imply thermalization. We adapt the ETH to noncommuting charges by positing a non-Abelian ETH and invoking the approximate microcanonical subspace introduced in quantum thermodynamics. Illustrating with SU(2) symmetry, we apply the non-Abelian ETH in calculating local operators' time-averaged and thermal expectation values. In many cases, we prove, the time average thermalizes. However, we find cases in which, under a physically reasonable assumption, the time average converges to the thermal average unusually slowly as a function of the global-system size. This work extends the ETH, a cornerstone of many-body physics, to noncommuting charges, recently a subject of intense activity in quantum thermodynamics.
We introduce a mathematical framework for symmetry-resolved entanglement entropy with a non-Abelian symmetry group. To obtain a reduced density matrix that is block-diagonal in the non-Abelian charges, we define subsystems operationally in terms of subalgebras of invariant observables. We derive exact formulas for the average and the variance of the typical entanglement entropy for the ensemble of random pure states with fixed non-Abelian charges. We focus on compact, semisimple Lie groups. We show that, compared to the Abelian case, new phenomena arise from the interplay of locality and non-Abelian symmetry, such as the asymmetry of the entanglement entropy under subsystem exchange, which we show in detail by computing the Page curve of a many-body system with SU(2) S U ( 2 ) symmetry.
Abstract We study the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) in chaotic conformal field theories (CFTs) of arbitrary dimensions. Assuming local ETH, we compute the reduced density matrix of a ball-shaped subsystem of finite size in the infinite volume limit when the full system is an energy eigenstate. This reduced density matrix is close in trace distance to a density matrix, to which we refer as the ETH density matrix, that is independent of all the details of an eigenstate except its energy and charges under global symmetries. In two dimensions, the ETH density matrix is universal for all theories with the same value of central charge. We argue that the ETH density matrix is close in trace distance to the reduced density matrix of the (micro)canonical ensemble. We support the argument in higher dimensions by comparing the Von Neumann entropy of the ETH density matrix with the entropy of a black hole in holographic systems in the low temperature limit. Finally, we generalize our analysis to the coherent states with energy density that varies slowly in space, and show that locally such states are well described by the ETH density matrix.
We consider a many-body Hilbert space with a fixed global charge and show that the typical entanglement entropy of a subsystem, at the leading and subleading order in the thermodynamic limit, can be expressed in terms of a single quantity which represents the local thermal entropy at fixed charge density. We find a general formula which applies both to abelian U(1) symmetry and non-abelian SU(2) symmetry, including the case of a local Hilbert space which transforms under a general reducible representation of the symmetry group. We illustrate the general formula with model systems and discuss the relevance of the results as a probe of quantum chaos for physical Hamiltonians.
We study subsystem entropies in 2d CFTs for subsystems constituting a finite fraction of the full system. We focus on the extensive contribution, which scales linearly with the subsystem size in the thermodynamic limit. We employ the so-called diagonal approximation to evaluate subsystem entropy for chaotic CFTs in the thermal state (canonical ensemble), the microcanonical ensemble, and in a primary state, matching previously known results. We then proceed to find analytic expressions for the subsystem entropy at leading order in c , when the global CFT state is the KdV-generalized Gibbs ensemble or the KdV-microcanonical ensemble. Previous studies of primary eigenstates have shown that, akin to the fixed-area states in AdS/CFT, the corresponding subsystem entanglement spectrum is flat. This behavior is seemingly in sharp contradiction with that of the thermal (microcanonical) state, and thus in apparent contradiction with the subsystem eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). In this paper, we resolve this issue by comparing the primary state with the KdV-(micro)canonical ensemble. We show that the results are consistent with the KdV-generalized version of the subsystem ETH, in which local properties of quantum eigenstates are governed by their values of conserved KdV charges. Our paper solidifies evidence for the KdV-generalized ETH in 2d CFTs and emphasizes Rényi entropy as a sensitive probe of the reduced-density matrix.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) explains how generic quantum many-body systems thermalize internally. It implies that local operators' time-averaged expectation values approximately equal their thermal expectation values, regardless of microscopic details. The ETH's range of applicability therefore impacts theory and experiments. Murthy et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 140402 (2023)0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.130.140402] recently showed that non-Abelian symmetries conflict with the ETH. Such symmetries have excited interest in quantum thermodynamics lately, as they are equivalent to conserved quantities that fail to commute with each other and noncommutation is a quintessentially quantum phenomenon. Murthy et al. proposed a non-Abelian ETH, which we support numerically. The numerics model a one-dimensional next-nearest-neighbor Heisenberg chain of 18 qubits. We represent local operators with matrices relative to an energy eigenbasis. The matrices bear out seven predictions of the non-Abelian ETH. We also prove analytically that the non-Abelian ETH exhibits a self-consistency property. The proof relies on a thermodynamic-entropy definition different from that of Murthy et al. This work initiates the observation and application of the non-Abelian ETH.