We show that apparently thermalized states still store relevant amounts of information about their past, information that can be tracked by experiments involving nonequilibrium processes. We provide a condition for the microcanonical quantum Crookś theorem, and we test it by means of numerical experiments. In the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, two different procedures leading to the same equilibrium states give rise to different statistics of work in nonequilibrium processes. In the Dicke model, two different trajectories for the same nonequilibrium protocol produce different statistics of work. Microcanonical averages provide the correct results for the expectation values of physical observables in all the cases; the microcanonical quantum Crookś theorem fails in some of them. We conclude that testing quantum fluctuation theorems is mandatory to verify if a system is properly thermalized.
We investigate the evolution of a target qubit caused by its multiple random collisions with $N$-qubit clusters. Depending on the cluster state, the evolution of the target qubit may correspond to its effective interaction with a thermal bath, a coherent (laser) drive, or a squeezed bath. In cases where the target qubit relaxes to a thermal state its dynamics can exhibit a quantum advantage, whereby the target-qubit temperature can be scaled up proportionally to $N^2$ and the thermalization time can be shortened by a similar factor, provided the appropriate coherence in the cluster is prepared…
Collective thermalization, work reliability, and resource bounds in a population-inverted Dicke Otto engine
Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal de Goiás（戈亚斯联邦大学物理研究所）；Department of Physics, Zhejiang Normal University（浙江师范大学物理学院）；Department of Fundamental Sciences, Hainan Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences（海南比勒费尔德应用科学大学基础科学系）
We theoretically investigate thermalization and spin diffusion driven by a quantum spin bath for a realistic solid-state NMR experiment. We consider polycrystalline L-alanine, and investigate how the spin polarization spreads among several $^{13}$C nuclear spins, which interact via dipole-dipole coupling with the bath of strongly dipolar-coupled $^1$H nuclear (proton) spins. We do this by using direct numerical simulation of the many-spin time-dependent Schrödinger equation. We find that, although the proton spins located near the carbon sites interact most strongly with the $^{13}$C spins, th…
We discuss the onset of quantum chaos and thermalization in the two-mode Dicke model, which describes the dipolar interaction between an ensemble of spins and two bosonic modes. The two-mode Dicke model exhibits normal to superradiant quantum phase transition with spontaneous breaking either of a discrete or continuous symmetry. We study the behaviour of the fidelity out-of-time-order correlator derived from the Loschmidt echo signal in the quantum phases of the model and show that its exponential growth cannot be related to a classical unstable point in the general case. Moreover, we find tha…
We analyze the dynamics of N interacting spins (quantum register) collectively coupled to a thermal environment. Each spin experiences the same environment interaction, consisting of an energy conserving and an energy exchange part. We find the decay rates of the reduced density matrix elements in the energy basis. We show that if the spins do not interact among each other, then the fastest decay rates of off-diagonal matrix elements induced by the energy conserving interaction is of order N^2, while that one induced by the energy exchange interaction is of the order N only. Moreover, the diag…
The intention of this work is twofold, first to present a most simple system capable of simulating the intrinsic bosonic Josephson effect with photons, and second to study various outcomes deriving from inherent or external decoherence. A qubit induces an effective coupling between two externally pumped cavity modes. Without cavity losses and in the dispersive regime, intrinsic Josephson oscillations of photons between the two modes occurs. In this case, contrary to regular Markovian decoherence, the qubit purity shows a Gaussian decay and recurrence of its coherence. Due to intrinsic non-line…
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…
Collective effects in the interaction of light with ensembles of identical scatterers play an important role in many fields of physics. However, often the term ``identical'' is not accurate due to the presence of hyperfine fields which induce inhomogeneous transition shifts and splittings. Here we develop a formalism based on the Green function method to model the linear response of such inhomogeneous ensembles in one-dimensional waveguides. We obtain a compact formula for the collective spectrum, which exhibits deviations from the uniform frequency shift and broadening expected of two level s…
We highlight a dynamical anomaly in which the rate of relaxation towards thermal equilibrium in a bi-partite quantum system violates the standard linear-response (Kubo) formulation, even when the underlying dynamics is highly chaotic. This anomaly originates from an $\hbar$-dependent sparsity of the underlying quantum network of transitions. Using a minimal bi-partite Bose-Hubbard model as an example, we find that the relaxation rate acquires an anomalous $\hbar$ dependence that reflects percolation-like dynamics in energy space.
We study the finite-time effects in a quantum Otto cycle where a collective spin system is used as the working fluid. Starting from a simple one-qubit system we analyze the transition to the limit cycle in the case of a finite-time thermalization. If the system consists of a large sample of independent qubits interacting coherently with the heat bath, the superradiant equilibration is observed. We show that this phenomenon can boost the power of the engine. Mutual interaction of qubits in the working fluid is modeled by the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick Hamiltonian. We demonstrate that in this case the…
Thermalization in highly excited quantum many-body system does not necessarily mean a complete memory loss of the way the system was formed. This effect may pave a way for a quantum computing, with a large number of qubits $n\simeq 100$--1000, far beyond the quantum chaos border. One of the manifestations of such a thermalized non-equilibrated matter is revealed by a strong asymmetry around 90$^\circ $ c.m. of evaporating proton yield in the Bi($γ$,p) photonuclear reaction. The effect is described in terms of anomalously slow cross symmetry phase relaxation in highly excited quantum many-body …
We explore the robustness of universal dynamical scaling behavior in a quantum system near criticality with respect to initialization in a large class of states with finite energy. By focusing on a homogeneous XY quantum spin chain in a transverse field, we characterize the non-equilibrium response under adiabatic and sudden quench processes originating from a pure as well as a mixed excited initial state, and involving either a regular quantum critical or a multicritical point. We find that the critical exponents of the ground-state quantum phase transition can be encoded in the dynamical sca…
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 examine how the magnetic susceptibility obtained by the quench experiment on isolated quantum systems is related to the isothermal and adiabatic susceptibilities defined in thermodynamics. Under the conditions similar to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, together with some additional natural ones, we prove that for translationally invariant systems the quench susceptibility as a function of wave vector k is discontinuous at k=0. Moreover, its values at k=0 and the k to 0 limit coincide with the adiabatic and the isothermal susceptibilities, respectively. We give numerical prediction…
We predict the existence of exchange broadening of optical lineshapes in disordered molecular aggregates and a nonuniversal disorder scaling of the localization characteristics of the collective electronic excitations (excitons). These phenomena occur for heavy-tailed Lévy disorder distributions with divergent second moments - distributions that play a role in many branches of physics. Our results sharply contrast with aggregate models commonly analyzed, where the second moment is finite. They bear a relevance for other types of collective excitations as well.
Recent realization of a kinetically-constrained chain of Rydberg atoms by Bernien et al. [Nature 551, 579 (2017)] resulted in the observation of unusual revivals in the many-body quantum dynamics. In our previous work [arXiv:1711.03528] such dynamics was attributed to the existence of "quantum scarred" eigenstates in the many-body spectrum of the experimentally realized model. Here we present a detailed study of the eigenstate properties of the same model. We find that the majority of the eigenstates exhibit anomalous thermalization: the observable expectation values converge to their Gibbs en…
Atypical eigenstates in the form of quantum scars and fragmentation of Hilbert space due to conservation laws provide obstructions to thermalization in the absence of disorder. In certain models with dipole and $U(1)$ conservation, the fragmentation results in subdiffusive transport. In this paper we study the interplay between scarring and weak fragmentation giving rise to anomalous hydrodynamics in a class of one-dimensional spin-$1$ frustration-free projector Hamiltonians, known as deformed Motzkin chain. The ground states and low-lying excitations of these chains exhibit large entanglement…
Thermalizing quantum systems are conventionally described by statistical mechanics at equilibrium. However, not all systems fall into this category, with many body localization providing a generic mechanism for thermalization to fail in strongly disordered systems. Many-body localized (MBL) systems remain perfect insulators at non-zero temperature, which do not thermalize and therefore cannot be described using statistical mechanics. In this Colloquium we review recent theoretical and experimental advances in studies of MBL systems, focusing on the new perspective provided by entanglement and …
Relaxation of few-body quantum systems can strongly depend on the initial state when the system's semiclassical phase space is mixed, i.e., regions of chaotic motion coexist with regular islands. In recent years, there has been much effort to understand the process of thermalization in strongly interacting quantum systems that often lack an obvious semiclassical limit. Time-dependent variational principle (TDVP) allows to systematically derive an effective classical (nonlinear) dynamical system by projecting unitary many-body dynamics onto a manifold of weakly-entangled variational states. We …
