Using the ergodicity principle for the expectation values of several types of observables, we investigate the thermalization process in isolated fermionic systems. These are described by the two-body random ensemble, which is a paradigmatic model to study quantum chaos and specially the dynamical transition from integrability to chaos. By means of exact diagonalizations we analyze the relevance of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis as well as the influence of other factors, like the energy and structure of the initial state, or the dimension of the Hilbert space. We also obtain analytical expressions linking the degree of thermalization for a given observable with the so-called number of principal components for transition strengths originated at a given energy, with the dimensions of the whole Hilbert space and microcanonical energy shell, and with the correlations generated by the observable. As the strength of the residual interaction is increased an order-to-chaos transition takes place, and we show that the onset of Wigner spectral fluctuations, which is the standard signature of chaos, is not sufficient to guarantee thermalization in finite systems. When all the signatures of chaos are fulfilled, including the quasi complete delocalization of eigenfunctions, the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis is the mechanism responsible for the thermalization of certain types of observables, such as (linear combinations of) occupancies and strength function operators. Our results also suggest that fully chaotic systems will thermalize relative to most observables in the thermodynamic limit.
Employing one plus two-body random matrix ensembles for bosons, temperature and entropy are calculated, using different definitions, as a function of the two-body interaction strength λfor a system with 10 bosons (m=10) in five single particle levels (N=5). It is found that in a region λ\sim λ_t, different definitions give essentially same values for temperature and entropy, thus defining a thermalization region. Also, (m,N) dependence of λ_t has been derived. It is seen that λ_t is much larger than the λvalues where level fluctuations change from Poisson to GOE and strength functions change f…
A profound quest of statistical mechanics is the origin of irreversibility - the arrow of time. New stimulants have been provided, thanks to unprecedented degree of control reached in experiments with isolated quantum systems and rapid theoretical developments of manybody localization in disordered interacting systems. The proposal of (many-body) eigenstate thermalization (ET) for these systems reinforces the common belief that either interaction or extrinsic randomness is required for thermalization. Here, we unveil a quantum thermalization mechanism challenging this belief. We find that, pro…
We study thermalization in many-body quantum systems locally coupled to an external bath. It is shown that quantum chaotic systems do thermalize, that is, they exhibit relaxation to an invariant ergodic state which, in the bulk, is well approximated by the grand canonical state. Moreover, the resulting ergodic state in the bulk does not depend on the details of the baths. On the other hand, for integrable systems the invariant state does depend on the bath and is different from the grand canonical state.
We investigate eigenstate thermalization from the point of view of vanishing particle and heat currents between a few-body fermionic Hamiltonian prepared in one of its eigenstates and an external, weakly coupled Fermi-Dirac gas. The latter acts as a thermometric probe, with its temperature and chemical potential set so that there is neither particle nor heat current between the two subsystems. We argue that the probe temperature can be attributed to the few-fermion eigenstate in the sense that (i) it varies smoothly with energy from eigenstate to eigenstate, (ii) it is equal to the temperature…
We study the coherent quantum evolution of a closed and driven mesoscopic chain of two-level systems that interact via the van-der-Waals interaction in their excited state. The Hamiltonian consists of a part corresponding to a classical lattice gas and an off-diagonal driving term without classical counterpart. We show that in a certain parameter range the latter leads to a thermalization of the system with respect to observables of the classical lattice gas such as the interaction energy and particle number distribution. We investigate the evolution of the system into this thermal state and d…
We introduce a simple model of hard spheres with gravitational interactions, for which we study a suitable scaling limit. Usual extensive properties are maintained notwithstanding the long range of gravitational interaction. We show that a local thermalization spontaneously emerges within a microcanonical description of the stationary state. In the considered scaling limit, the resulting density profile can be determined in a hydrostatic approach.
We construct a collision model description of the thermalization of a finite many-body system by using careful derivation of the corresponding Lindblad-type master equation in the weak coupling regime. Using the example of two level target system, we show that collision model thermalization is crucially dependent on the various relevant system and bath timescales and on ensuring that the environment is composed of ancillae which are resonant with the system transition frequencies. Using this we extend our analysis to show that our collision model can lead to thermalisation for certain classes …
For quantum systems that are weakly coupled to a much 'bigger' environment, thermalization of possibly far from equilibrium initial ensembles is demonstrated: for sufficiently large times, the ensemble is for all practical purposes indistinguishable from a canonical density operator under conditions that are satisfied under many, if not all, experimentally realistic conditions.
We conjecture that thermalization following a quantum quench in a strongly correlated quantum system is closely connected to many-body delocalization in the space of quasi-particles. This scenario is tested in the anisotropic Heisenberg spin chain with different types of integrability-breaking terms. We first quantify the deviations from integrability by analyzing the level spacing statistics and the inverse participation ratio of the system's eigenstates. We then focus on thermalization, by studying the dynamics after a sudden quench of the anisotropy parameter. Our numerical simulations clea…
Understanding how isolated quantum systems thermalize has recently gathered renewed interest almost 100 years after the first work by von Neumann, thanks to the experimental realizations of such systems. Experimental and numerical pieces of evidence imply that nonintegrability of the system plays an important role in thermalization. Nonintegrable systems that conserve energy alone are expected to be effectively described by the (micro)canonical ensemble due to the so-called eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) in the thermodynamic limit. In contrast, it is expected that stationary states…
Coherence-induced deep thermalization transition in random permutation quantum dynamics
National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）；The University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学量子技术中心）
We develop a scheme for engineering genuine thermal states in analog quantum simulation platforms by coupling local degrees of freedom to driven, dissipative ancilla pseudospins. We demonstrate the scheme in a many-body quantum spin lattice simulation setting. A Born-Markov master equation describing the dynamics of the many-body system is developed, and we show that if the ancilla energies are periodically modulated, with a carefully chosen hierarchy of timescales, one can effectively thermalize the many-body system. Through analysis of the time-dependent dynamical generator, we determine the…
The recent discovery of quantum many-body scar states has revealed the possibility of having states with low entanglement that violate the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis in nonintegrable systems. Such states with low entanglement entropy are rare but naturally exist in the integrable system of free fermions. Here, we demonstrate analytically that these atypical states would be always eliminated when an arbitrary weak interaction is introduced between the fermions. In particular, we show that the probability of having a many-body scar state with entanglement entropy satisfying a sub-volum…
Deriving conditions under which a macroscopic system thermalizes directly from the underlying quantum many-body dynamics of its microscopic constituents is a long-standing challenge in theoretical physics. The well-known eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is presumed to be a key mechanism, but has defied rigorous verification for generic systems thus far. A weaker variant (weak ETH), by contrast, is provably true for a large variety of systems, including even many integrable models, but its implications with respect to the problem of thermalization are still largely unexplored. Here we…
The last decade has witnessed the remarkable progress in our understanding of thermalization in isolated quantum systems. Combining the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis with quantum measurement theory, we extend the framework of quantum thermalization to open many-body systems. A generic many-body system subject to continuous observation is shown to thermalize at a single trajectory level. We show that the nonunitary nature of quantum measurement causes several unique thermalization mechanisms that are unseen in isolated systems. We present numerical evidence for our findings by applying o…
We verify that the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) holds universally for locally interacting quantum many-body systems. Introducing random-matrix ensembles with interactions, we numerically obtain a distribution of maximum fluctuations of eigenstate expectation values for different realizations of the interactions. This distribution, which cannot be obtained from the conventional random matrix theory involving nonlocal correlations, demonstrates that an overwhelming majority of pairs of local Hamiltonians and observables satisfy the ETH with exponentially small fluctuations. The erg…
We provide an overview of our numerical and analytical studies of isolated interacting quantum systems that are quenched out of equilibrium instantaneously. We describe the relaxation process to a new equilibrium and obtain lower bounds for the relaxation time of full random matrices and realistic systems with two-body interactions. We show that the size of the time fluctuations after relaxation decays exponentially with system size for systems without too many degeneracies. We also discuss the conditions for thermalization and demonstrate that it can happen after local and global quenches in …
We investigate thermalization dynamics of a driven dipolar many-body quantum system through the stability of discrete time crystalline order. Using periodic driving of electronic spin impurities in diamond, we realize different types of interactions between spins and demonstrate experimentally that the interplay of disorder, driving and interactions leads to several qualitatively distinct regimes of thermalization. For short driving periods, the observed dynamics are well described by an effective Hamiltonian which sensitively depends on interaction details. For long driving periods, the syste…
Exactly solvable models that exhibit quantum signatures of classical chaos are both rare as well as important - more so in view of the fact that the mechanisms for ergodic behavior and thermalization in isolated quantum systems and its connections to non-integrability are under active investigation. In this work, we study quantum systems of few qubits collectively modeled as a kicked top, a textbook example of quantum chaos. In particular, we show that the 3 and 4 qubit cases are exactly solvable and yet, interestingly, can display signatures of ergodicity and thermalization. Deriving analytic…
We study measures of decoherence and thermalization of a quantum system $S$ in the presence of a quantum environment (bath) $E$. The entirety $S$$+$$E$ is prepared in a canonical thermal state at a finite temperature, that is the entirety is in a steady state. Both our numerical results and theoretical predictions show that measures of the decoherence and the thermalization of $S$ are generally finite, even in the thermodynamic limit, when the entirety $S$$+$$E$ is at finite temperature. Notably, applying perturbation theory with respect to the system-environment coupling strength, we find tha…
We study the ergodic side of the many-body localization transition in its standard model, the disordered Heisenberg quantum spin chain. We show that the Thouless energy, extracted from long-range spectral statistics and the power-spectrum of the full momentum distribution fluctuations, is not large enough to guarantee thermalization. We find that both estimates coincide and behave non-monotonically, exhibiting a strong peak at an intermediate value of the disorder. Furthermore, we show that non-thermalizing initial conditions occur well within the ergodic phase with larger probability than exp…
We study the collisional processes that can lead to thermalization in one-dimensional systems. For two body collisions excitations of transverse modes are the prerequisite for energy exchange and thermalzation. At very low temperatures excitations of transverse modes are exponentially suppressed, thermalization by two body collisions stops and the system should become integrable. In quantum mechanics virtual excitations of higher radial modes are possible. These virtually excited radial modes give rise to effective three-body velocity-changing collisions which lead to thermalization. We show t…
We study the thermalization of an ensemble of $N$ elementary, arbitrarily-complex, quantum systems, mutually noninteracting but coupled as electric or magnetic dipoles to a blackbody radiation. The elementary systems can be all the same or belong to different species, distinguishable or indistinguishable, located at fixed positions or having translational degrees of freedom. Even if the energy spectra of the constituent systems are nondegenerate, as we suppose, the ensemble unavoidably presents degeneracies of the energy levels and/or of the energy gaps. We show that, due to these degeneracies…
We investigate the relaxation dynamics of open non-integrable quantum many-body systems in the thermodynamic limit by using a tensor-network formalism. We simulate the Lindblad quantum master equation (LQME) of infinite systems by making use of the uniform matrix product operators (MPO) as the ansatz of their density matrices. Furthermore, we establish a method to measure the thermodynamic equivalence between two states described by the uniform MPOs. We numerically show that when an initial state of the LQME is a thermal Gibbs state, a time evolved state is always indistinguishable from a Gibb…
We explore the origin of the arrow of time in an isolated quantum system described by the Schroedinger equation. We provide an explanation from weak values in the configuration space, which are understood as operational properties obtained in the laboratory following a well-defined protocol. We show that quantum systems satisfying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis can simultaneously provide thermalized ensemble expectation values and nonthermalized weak values of the momentum, both from the same operational probability distribution. The reason why weak values of the momentum may escape …
We investigate steady states of macroscopic quantum systems under dissipation not obeying the detailed balance condition. We argue that the Gibbs state at an effective temperature gives a good description of the steady state provided that the system Hamiltonian obeys the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) and the perturbation theory in the weak system-environment coupling is valid in the thermodynamic limit. We derive a criterion to guarantee the validity of the perturbation theory, which is satisfied in the thermodynamic limit for sufficiently weak dissipation when the Liouvillian is …
Thermalization has been shown to occur in a number of closed quantum many-body systems, but the description of the actual thermalization dynamics is prohibitively complex. Here, we present a model - in one and two dimensions - for which we can analytically show that the evolution into thermal equilibrium is governed by a Fokker-Planck equation derived from the underlying quantum dynamics. Our approach does not rely on a formal distinction of weakly coupled bath and system degrees of freedom. The results show that transitions within narrow energy shells lead to a dynamics which is dominated by …
We investigate equilibration and generalized thermalization of the quantum Harmonic chain under local quantum quench. The quench action we consider is connecting two disjoint harmonic chains of different sizes and the system jumps between two integrable settings. We verify the validity of the Generalized Gibbs Ensemble description for this infinite dimensional Hilbert space system and also identify equilibration between the subsystems as in classical systems. Using Bogoliubov transformations, we show that the eigenstates of the system prior to the quench evolve towards the Gibbs Generalized En…
Entanglement is usually quantified by von Neumann entropy, but its properties are much more complex than what can be expressed with a single number. We show that the three distinct dynamical phases known as thermalization, Anderson localization, and many-body localization are marked by different patterns of the spectrum of the reduced density matrix for a state evolved after a quantum quench. While the entanglement spectrum displays Poisson statistics for the case of Anderson localization, it displays universal Wigner-Dyson statistics for both the cases of many-body localization and thermaliza…
The University of Tokyo（东京大学）；RIKEN Pioneering Research Institute (PRI)（理化学研究所先导研究本部）；RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS)（理化学研究所跨学科理论与数学科学中心）
The clustering property of an equilibrium bipartite correlation is one of the most general thermodynamic properties in non-critical many-body quantum systems. Herein, we consider the thermalization properties of a system class exhibiting the clustering property. We investigate two regimes, namely, regimes of high and low density of states corresponding to high and low energy regimes, respectively. We show that the clustering property is connected to several properties on the eigenstate thermalization through the density of states. Remarkably, the eigenstate thermalization is obtained in the lo…
In non-interacting isolated quantum systems out of equilibrium, local subsystems typically relax to non-thermal stationary states. In the standard framework, information on the rest of the system is discarded, and such states are described by a Generalized Gibbs Ensemble (GGE), maximizing the entropy while respecting the constraints imposed by the local conservation laws. Here we show that the latter also completely characterize a recently introduced projected ensemble (PE), constructed by performing projective measurements on the rest of the system and recording the outcomes. By focusing on t…
We show that the known bound on the growth rate of the out-of-time-order four-point correlator in chaotic many-body quantum systems follows directly from the general structure of operator matrix elements in systems that obey the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. This ties together two key paradigms of thermal behavior in isolated many-body quantum systems.
We investigate the role of symmetries in determining the random matrix class describing quantum thermalization in a periodically driven many body quantum system. Using a combination of analytical arguments and numerical exact diagonalization, we establish that a periodically driven `Floquet' system can be in a different random matrix class to the instantaneous Hamiltonian. A periodically driven system can thermalize even when the instantaneous Hamiltonian is integrable. A Floquet system that thermalizes in general can display integrable behavior at commensurate driving frequencies. When the in…
We introduce `PI-Entropy' $Π(\tildeρ)$ (the Permutation entropy of an Indexed ensemble) to quantify mixing due to complex dynamics for an ensemble $ρ$ of different initial states evolving under identical dynamics. We find that $Π(\tildeρ)$ acts as an excellent proxy for the thermodynamic entropy $S(ρ)$ but is much more computationally efficient. We study 1-D and 2-D iterative maps and find that $Π(\tildeρ)$ dynamics distinguish a variety of system time scales and track global loss of information as the ensemble relaxes to equilibrium. There is a universal S-shaped relaxation to equilibrium for…
We extend the results of two of our papers [Phys. Rev. A 94, 041603R (2016) and Phys. Rev. B 97, 060303R (2018)] that touch upon the intimately connected topics of quantum chaos and thermalization. In the first, we argued that when the initial state of isolated lattice many-body quantum systems is chaotic, the power-law decay of the survival probability is caused by the bounds in the spectrum, and thus anticipates thermalization. In the current work, we provide stronger numerical support for the onset of these algebraic behaviors. In the second paper, we demonstrated that the correlation hole,…
Quantum many-body scar states are exceptional finite energy density eigenstates in an otherwise thermalizing system that do not satisfy the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. We investigate the fate of exact many-body scar states under perturbations. At small system sizes, deformed scar states described by perturbation theory survive. However, we argue for their eventual thermalization in the thermodynamic limit from the finite-size scaling of the off-diagonal matrix elements. Nevertheless, we show numerically and analytically that the nonthermal properties of the scars survive for a parame…
The generalized Gibbs ensemble introduced for describing few body correlations in exactly solvable systems following a quantum quench is related to the nonergodic way in which operators sample, in the limit of infinite time after the quench, the quantum correlations present in the initial state. The nonergodicity of the correlations is thus shown \emph{analytically} to imply the equivalence with the generalized Gibbs ensemble for quantum Ising and XX spin chains as well as for the Luttinger model the thermodynamic limit, and for a broad class of initial states and correlation functions of both…
We study how the proximity to an integrable point or to localization as one approaches the atomic limit, as well as the mixing of symmetries in the chaotic domain, may affect the onset of thermalization in finite one-dimensional systems. We consider systems of hard-core bosons at half-filling with nearest neighbor hopping and interaction, and next-nearest neighbor interaction. The latter breaks integrability and induces a ground-state superfluid to insulator transition. By full exact diagonalization, we study chaos indicators and few-body observables. We show that when different symmetry secto…
Provable quantum thermalization without statistical averages
JILA and Center for Theory of Quantum Matter, Department of Physics, University of Colorado（科罗拉多大学物理系量子物质理论中心及JILA）；University of Colorado, Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校）
