One-dimensional quantum Gibbs states in constant circuit depth
Saúl Pilatowsky-Cameo, Georgios Styliaris, Ainesh Bakshi +1 more
We prove that the Gibbs state of any spin chain can be exactly decomposed into a mixture of product states over contiguous blocks of qubits with bounded length, at any constant temperature. As a consequence, any such Gibbs state can be prepared by local unitary circuits of constant depth, with efficient classical preprocessing. We place strong limits on the spatial structure of thermal entanglement: both the entanglement depth and entanglement width (measures of multiparticle entanglement) are bounded by constants, while the localizable entanglement (the bipartite entanglement that can be generated with the aid of local measurements and classical communication) vanishes exactly beyond a constant threshold distance. Our result also has implications for quantum thermalization: for any translation-invariant spin-chain Hamiltonian with nondegenerate spectral gaps, typical low-complexity pure states drawn from a maximally entropic ensemble at any constant effective temperature become locally indistinguishable from the Gibbs state upon unitary evolution. Additionally, we obtain an analogous decomposition for fermionic systems: the Gibbs state of any 1D local fermionic Hamiltonian is exactly a mixture of constant-depth local fermionic circuits acting on Gaussian states.
quant-pharXiv:2609.35973•Sep 30, 2026•0 citations