It was recently observed that in certain thermalizing many-body systems, measuring the complement of a subsystem that thermalized to infinite temperature in a suitable orthonormal basis gives rise to approximate quantum state k-designs as post-measurement states on the subsystem. We prove that this emergence of approximate k-designs holds true in every large system where some small subsystem is close to being maximally mixed. On a technical level we show that any high-dimensional purification of an approximately maximally mixed state induces an approximate quantum state k-design when measured in a suitable orthonormal basis. Moreover, we show that this is true with overwhelming probability for measurement bases chosen uniformly at random from the Haar measure.
Quantum thermalization mechanism and the emergence of symmetry-breaking phases
Universidad Complutense de Madrid（马德里康普顿斯大学）；Instituto de Estructura de la Materia, IEM-CSIC（物质结构研究所，西班牙国家研究委员会）；Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University（查理大学数学物理学院）
Laboratoire de Physique de l’École normale supérieure, ENS, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité（巴黎高等师范学院物理实验室）；Physics Department, Washington University in St. Louis（华盛顿大学圣路易斯分校物理系）；LPTMC, CNRS-UMR 7600, Sorbonne Université（索邦大学CNRS-UMR 7600理论统计物理中心）
We investigate theoretically the emergence of classical statistical physics in a finite quantum system that is either totally isolated or otherwise subjected to a quantum measurement process. We show via a random matrix theory approach to nonintegrable quantum systems that the set of outcomes of the measurement of a macroscopic observable evolve in time like stochastic variables, whose variance satisfies the celebrated Einstein relation for Brownian diffusion. Our results show how to extend the framework of eigenstate thermalization to the prediction of properties of quantum measurements on an…
Boltzmann's ergodic hypothesis furnishes a possible explanation for the emergence of statistical mechanics in the framework of classical physics. In quantum mechanics, the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) is instead generally considered as a possible route to thermalization. This is because the notion of ergodicity itself is vague in the quantum world and it is often simply taken as a synonym for thermalization. Here we show, in an elementary way, that when quantum ergodicity is properly defined, it is, in fact, equivalent to ETH. In turn, ergodicity is equivalent to thermalization, …
We study the emergence over time of a universal, uniform distribution of quantum states supported on a finite subsystem, induced by projectively measuring the rest of the system. Dubbed deep thermalization, this phenomenon represents a form of equilibration in quantum many-body systems stronger than regular thermalization, which only constrains the ensemble-averaged values of observables. While there exist quantum circuit models of dynamics in one dimension where this phenomenon can be shown to arise exactly, these are special in that deep thermalization occurs at precisely the same time as re…
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…
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) offers a universal mechanism for the approach to equilibrium of closed quantum many-body systems. So far, however, experimental studies have focused on the relaxation dynamics of observables as described by the diagonal part of ETH, whose verification requires substantial numerical input. This leaves many of the general assumptions of ETH untested. Here, we propose a theory-independent route to probe the full ETH in quantum simulators by observing the emergence of fluctuation-dissipation relations, which directly probe the off-diagonal part of ETH…
We discuss eigenstate correlations for ergodic, spatially extended many-body quantum systems, in terms of the statistical properties of matrix elements of local observables. While the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is known to give an excellent description of these quantities, the butterfly effect implies structure beyond ETH. We determine the universal form of this structure at long distances and small eigenvalue separations for Floquet systems. We use numerical studies of a Floquet quantum circuit to illustrate both the accuracy of ETH and the existence of our predicted additiona…
We calculate the fluorescence spectra of a driven lattice of coupled cavities. To do this, we extend methods of evaluating two-time correlations in infinite lattices to open quantum systems; this allows access to momentum resolved fluorescence spectrum. We illustrate this for a driven-dissipative transverse field anisotropic XY model. By studying the fluctuation dissipation theorem, we find the emergence of a quasi-thermalized steady state with a temperature dependent on system parameters; for blue detuned driving, we show this effective temperature is negative. In the low excitation density l…
Center for Theoretical Physics — a Leinweber Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院莱因韦伯理论物理中心）；California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校物理系）；National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）；Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学量子技术中心）
In this work, we use quantum complexity theory to quantify the difficulty of distinguishing eigenstates obeying the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH). After identifying simple operators with an algebra of low-energy observables and tracing out the complementary high-energy Hilbert space, the ETH leads to an exponential suppression of trace distance between the coarse-grained eigenstates. Conversely, we show that an exponential hardness of distinguishing between states implies ETH-like matrix elements. The BBBV lower bound on the query complexity of Grover search then translates direct…
Bypassing eigenstate thermalization with experimentally accessible quantum dynamics
JILA and Center for Theory of Quantum Matter, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校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）
Complexity of dynamics is at the core of quantum many-body chaos and exhibits a hierarchical feature: higher-order complexity implies more chaotic dynamics. Conventional ergodicity in thermalization processes is a manifestation of the lowest order complexity, which is represented by the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) stating that individual energy eigenstates are thermal. Here, we propose a higher-order generalization of the ETH, named the $ k $-ETH ($ k=1,2,\dots $), to quantify higher-order complexity of quantum many-body dynamics at the level of individual energy eigenstates, wh…
Deep Thermalization and Measurements of Quantum Resources
Pitaevskii BEC Center, CNR-INO and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Trento（庞塔夫斯基玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚中心，意大利国家研究委员会意大利国家光学研究所和特伦托大学物理系）；INFN-TIFPA, Trento Institute for Fundamental Physics and Applications（意大利国家核物理研究所-特伦托基础物理与应用研究所）
We study the dynamics of a quantum system in thermal equilibrium that is suddenly coupled to a bath at a different temperature, a situation inspired by a particular black hole evaporation protocol. We prove a universal positivity bound on the integrated rate of change of the system energy which holds perturbatively in the system-bath coupling. Applied to holographic systems, this bound implies a particular instance of the averaged null energy condition. We also study in detail the particular case of two coupled SYK models in the limit of many fermions using the Schwinger-Keldysh non-equilibriu…
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 the quantum Fisher information (QFI) and, thus, the multipartite entanglement structure of thermal pure states in the context of the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH). In both the canonical ensemble and the ETH, the quantum Fisher information may be explicitly calculated from the response functions. In the case of ETH, we find that the expression of the QFI bounds the corresponding canonical expression from above. This implies that although average values and fluctuations of local observables are indistinguishable from their canonical counterpart, the entanglement structure o…
We provide further analytical insights into the newly established noninteracting (free-fermion) Page curve, focusing on both the kinematic and dynamical aspects. First, we unveil the underlying canonical typicality and atypicality for random free-fermion states. The former appears for a small subsystem and is exponentially weaker than the well-known result in the interacting case. The latter explains why the free-fermion Page curve differs remarkably from the interacting one when the subsystem is macroscopically large, i.e., comparable with the entire system. Second, we find that the free-ferm…
