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Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis and approximate quantum error correction

Ning Bao

Published May 27, 2022• 9 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is a powerful conjecture for understanding how statistical mechanics emerges in a large class of many-body quantum systems. It has also been interpreted in a CFT context, and, in particular, holographic CFTs are expected to satisfy ETH. Recently, it was observed that the ETH condition corresponds to a necessary and sufficient condition for an approximate quantum error correcting code (AQECC), implying the presence of AQECCs in systems satisfying ETH. In this paper, we explore the properties of ETH as an error correcting code and show that there exists an explicit universal recovery channel for the code. Based on the analysis, we discuss a generalization that all chaotic theories contain error correcting codes. We then specialize to AdS/CFT to demonstrate the possibility of total bulk reconstruction in black holes with a well-defined macroscopic geometry. When combined with the existing AdS/CFT error correction story, this shows that black holes are enormously robust against erasure errors.

DOI
10.1007/jhep08%282019%29152

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The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is a powerful conjecture for understanding how statistical mechanics emerges in a large class of many-body quantum systems. It has also been interpreted in a CFT context, and, in particular, holographic CFTs are expected to satisfy ETH. Recently, it was observed that the ETH condition corresponds to a necessary and sufficient condition for an approximate quantum error correcting code (AQECC), implying the presence of AQECCs in systems satisfying ETH. In this paper, we explore the properties of ETH as an error correcting code and show that there exists an explicit universal recovery channel for the code. Based on the analysis, we discuss a generalization that all chaotic theories contain error correcting codes. We then specialize to AdS/CFT to demonstrate the possibility of total bulk reconstruction in black holes with a well-defined macroscopic geometry. When combined with the existing AdS/CFT error correction story, this shows that black holes are enormously robust against erasure errors.
Abstract The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is a powerful conjecture for understanding how statistical mechanics emerges in a large class of many-body quantum systems. It has also been interpreted in a CFT context, and, in particular, holographic CFTs are expected to satisfy ETH. Recently, it was observed that the ETH condition corresponds to a necessary and sufficient condition for an approximate quantum error correcting code (AQECC), implying the presence of AQECCs in systems satisfying ETH. In this paper, we explore the properties of ETH as an error correcting code and show that there exists an explicit universal recovery channel for the code. Based on the analysis, we discuss a generalization that all chaotic theories contain error correcting codes. We then specialize to AdS/CFT to demonstrate the possibility of total bulk reconstruction in black holes with a well-defined macroscopic geometry. When combined with the existing AdS/CFT error correction story, this shows that black holes are enormously robust against erasure errors.
Quantum error correction was invented to allow for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Systems with topological order turned out to give a natural physical realization of quantum error correcting codes (QECC) in their ground spaces. More recently, in the context of the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, it has been argued that eigenstates of CFTs with a holographic dual should also form QECCs. These two examples raise the question of how generally eigenstates of many-body models form quantum codes. In this Letter we establish new connections between quantum chaos and translation invariance in many-body spin systems, on one hand, and approximate quantum error correcting codes (AQECC), on the other hand. We first observe that quantum chaotic systems obeying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis have eigenstates forming approximate quantum error-correcting codes. Then we show that AQECC can be obtained probabilistically from translation-invariant energy eigenstates of every translation-invariant spin chain, including integrable models. Applying this result to 1D classical systems, we describe a method for using local symmetries to construct parent Hamiltonians that embed these codes into the low-energy subspace of gapless 1D quantum spin chains. As explicit examples we obtain local AQECC in the ground space of the 1D ferromagnetic Heisenberg model and the Motzkin spin chain model with periodic boundary conditions, thereby yielding nonstabilizer codes in the ground space and low energy subspace of physically plausible 1D gapless models.
A bstract The strong eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) provides a sufficient condition for thermalization and equilibration. Although it is expected to be hold in a wide class of highly chaotic theories, there are only a few analytic examples demonstrating the strong ETH in special cases, often through methods related to integrability. In this paper, we explore sufficient conditions for the strong ETH that may apply to a broad range of chaotic theories. These conditions are expressed as inequalities involving the long-time averages of real-time thermal correlators. Specifically, as an illustration, we consider simple toy examples which satisfy these conditions under certain technical assumptions. This toy models have same properties as holographic theories at least in the perturbation in large N . We give a few comments for more realistic holographic models.
Via holographic duality (or ‘AdS/CFT'), the process of black hole formation and evaporation corresponds to the process of thermalization of certain (unitary) quantum field theories, evolving from non-equilibrium initial states towards thermal equilibrium. In this context, the question of how thermal a generic high-energy eigenstate looks in a theory with a holographic dual is closely tied to the question of how legitimately one may consider the dual geometry of this pure state to be a black hole. In this thesis we present some results which shed light on the nature of this relationship, through a detailed study of the dynamics of the so-called SYK model —a holographic, many-body quantum mechanical system of interacting fermions. The results indicate that this model satisfies the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, which we extend to explore its implications on certain quantum chaotic properties the SYK Hamiltonian that mirror the quantum chaotic behavior of black holes.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), which asserts that every eigenstate of a many-body quantum system is indistinguishable from a thermal ensemble, plays a pivotal role in understanding thermalization of isolated quantum systems. Yet, no evidence has been obtained as to whether the ETH holds for all few-body operators in a chaotic system; such few-body operators include key quantities in statistical mechanics, such as the total magnetization, the momentum distributions, and their low-order thermal and quantum fluctuations. Here, we formulate a conjecture that for a generic nonintegrable system the ETH holds simultaneously for all mmm-body operators with m<α∗Nm < α_{\ast} Nm<α∗​N in the thermodynamic limit for some nonzero constant α∗>0α_{\ast} > 0α∗​>0. We first show the existence of such nontrivial constants for idealized (pseudo) random-matrix descriptions of many-body eigenstates. We then verify the conjecture for generic spin, Bose, and Fermi systems with local and few-body interactions by large-scale numerical calculations. Our results imply that generic systems satisfy the ETH simultaneously for all few-body operators, including their thermal and quantum fluctuations.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) provides a way to understand how an isolated quantum mechanical system can be approximated by a thermal density matrix. We find a class of operators in (1+1)-dimensional conformal field theories, consisting of quasiprimaries of the identity module, which satisfy the hypothesis only at the leading order in large central charge. In the context of subsystem ETH, this plays a role in the deviation of the reduced density matrices, corresponding to a finite energy density eigenstate from its hypothesized thermal approximation. The universal deviation in terms of the square of the trace-square distance goes as the eighth power of the subsystem fraction and is suppressed by powers of inverse central charge (c). Furthermore, the nonuniversal deviations from subsystem ETH are found to be proportional to the heavy-light-heavy structure constants which are typically exponentially suppressed in sqrt[h/c], where h is the conformal scaling dimension of the finite energy density state. We also examine the effects of the leading finite-size corrections.