Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis is a detailed statement of the matrix elements of few-body operators in energy eigenbasis of a chaotic Hamiltonian. Part of the statement is that the off-diagonal elements fall exponential for large energy difference. We propose that the exponent ($γ>0$) is a measure of quantum chaos. Smaller $γ$ implies more chaotic dynamics. The chaos bound is given by $γ=β/4$ where $β$ is the inverse temperature. We give analytical argument in support of this proposal. The slower exponential fall also means that the action of the operator on a state leads to higher delocalization in energy eigenbasis. Numerically we compare two chaotic Hamiltonians - SYK model and chaotic XXZ spin chain. Using the new measure, we find that the SYK model becomes maximally chaotic at low temperature which has been shown rigorously in previous works. The new measure is more readily accessible compare to other measures using numerical methods.
Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is discussed. We show that one common formulation of ETH does not necessarily imply thermalization of an observable of isolated many body quantum system. To get thermalization one has to postulate the canonical or microcanonical distribution in the ETH-ansatz. More generally, any other average can be postulated in the generalized ETH-ansatz which leads to a corresponding equilibration condition.
We propose a general method to embed target states into the middle of the energy spectrum of a many-body Hamiltonian as its energy eigenstates. Employing this method, we construct a translationally-invariant local Hamiltonian with no local conserved quantities, which does not satisfy the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. The absence of eigenstate thermalization for target states is analytically proved and numerically demonstrated. In addition, numerical calculations of two concrete models also show that all the energy eigenstates except for the target states have the property of eigenstate…
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis provides to date the most successful description of thermalization in isolated quantum systems by conjecturing statistical properties of matrix elements of typical operators in the (quasi-)energy eigenbasis. Here we study the distribution of matrix elements for a class of operators in dual-unitary quantum circuits in dependence of the frequency associated with the corresponding eigenstates. We provide an exact asymptotic expression for the spectral function, i.e., the second moment of this frequency resolved distribution. The latter is obtained from the…
Nonequilibrium dynamics of a nonintegrable system without the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis is studied. It is shown that, in the thermodynamic limit, this model thermalizes after an arbitrary quantum quench at finite temperature, although it does not satisfy the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. In contrast, when the system size is finite and the temperature is low enough, the system may not thermalize. In this case, the steady state is well described by the generalized Gibbs ensemble constructed by using highly nonlocal conserved quantities. We also show that this model exhibits pr…
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.
Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is discussed. We point out that the common formulation of the ETH suffers from the mixing of random and deterministic variables. We suggest a modified formulation of the ETH which includes only deterministic variables. We also show that this formulation of the ETH implies thermalization as well.
Having analytical instances of the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) is of obvious interest, both for fundamental and applied reasons. This is generically a hard task, due to the belief that non-linear interactions are basic ingredients of the thermalization mechanism. In this article we proof that random gaussian free fermions satisfy ETH in the multiparticle sector, by analytically computing the correlations and entanglement entropies of the theory. With the explicit construction at hand, we finally comment on the differences between fully random Hamiltonians and random Gaussian sys…
The Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) implies a form for the matrix elements of local operators between eigenstates of the Hamiltonian, expected to be valid for chaotic systems. Another signal of chaos is a positive Lyapunov exponent, defined on the basis of Loschmidt echo or out-of-time-order correlators. For this exponent to be positive, correlations between matrix elements unrelated by symmetry, usually neglected, have to exist. The same is true for the peak of the dynamic heterogeneity length, relevant for systems with slow dynamics. These correlations, as well as those between el…
We investigate the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) in d+1 dimensional conformal field theories by studying reduced density matrices in energy eigenstates. We show that if local probes of high energy primary eigenstates satisfy ETH, then any finite energy observable with support on a subsystem of finite size satisfies ETH. In two dimensions, we discover that if ETH holds locally, the finite size reduced density matrix of states created by heavy primary operators is well-approximated by a projection to the Virasoro identity block.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) insists that for nonintegrable systems each energy eigenstate accurately gives microcanonical expectation values for a class of observables. As a mechanism for ETH to hold, we show that the energy eigenstates are superposition of uncountably many quasi eigenstates of operationally defined "time operator", which are thermal for thermodynamic isolated quantum many-body systems and approximately orthogonal in terms of extremely short relaxation time of the fidelity. In this way, our scenario provides a theoretical explanation of ETH.
Generic ETH: Eigenstate Thermalization beyond the Microcanonical
The University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）；Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University（冲绳科学技术大学院大学）；Syracuse University（雪城大学）；Sarah Lawrence College（莎拉劳伦斯学院）
We investigate the eigenstate thermalization properties of the spin-1/2 $XXZ$ model in two-dimensional rectangular lattices of size $L_1\times L_2$ under periodic boundary conditions. Exploiting the symmetry property, we can perform an exact diagonalization study of the energy eigenvalues up to system size $4\times 7$ and of the energy eigenstates up to $4\times 6$. Numerical analysis of the Hamiltonian eigenvalue spectrum and matrix elements of an observable in the Hamiltonian eigenstate basis supports that the two-dimensional $XXZ$ model follows the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. When…
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…
Eigenstate thermalization is widely accepted as the mechanism behind thermalization in generic isolated quantum systems. Using the example of a single magnetic defect embedded in the integrable spin-1/2 $XXZ$ chain, we show that locally perturbing an integrable system can give rise to eigenstate thermalization. Unique to such setups is the fact that thermodynamic and transport properties of the unperturbed integrable chain emerge in properties of the eigenstates of the perturbed (nonintegrable) one. Specifically, we show that the diagonal matrix elements of observables in the perturbed eigenst…
This paper is a Reply paper to the Comment paper by Mondaini et.al. [arXiv:1711.06279]. We first distinguish the diagonal and the off-diagonal eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) in each sector and in the whole Hilbert space, and then clarify their properties and their roles in thermalization. We argue that our formulation of the ETH in our letter is a standard and natural one in the context of thermalization, and that our results are qualitatively new and unexpected.
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…
In a recent Letter [PhysRevLett.119.030601 (2017), arXiv:1702.08227], Shiraishi and Mori claim to provide a general method for constructing local Hamiltonians that do not exhibit eigenstate thermalization. We argue that the claim is based on a misunderstanding of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). More specifically, on the assumption that ETH is valid for the entire Hamiltonian matrix instead of each symmetry sector independently. We discuss what happens if one mixes symmetry sectors in the two-dimensional transverse field Ising model.
We study the onset of eigenstate thermalization in the two-dimensional transverse field Ising model (2D-TFIM) in the square lattice. We consider two non-equivalent Hamiltonians: the ferromagnetic 2D-TFIM and the antiferromagnetic 2D-TFIM in the presence of a uniform longitudinal field. We use full exact diagonalization to examine the behavior of quantum chaos indicators and of the diagonal matrix elements of operators of interest in the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian. A finite size scaling analysis reveals that quantum chaos and eigenstate thermalization occur in those systems whenever the fie…
We ask whether the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) is valid in a strong sense: in the limit of an infinite system, {\it every} eigenstate is thermal. We examine expectation values of few-body operators in highly-excited many-body eigenstates and search for `outliers', the eigenstates that deviate the most from ETH. We use exact diagonalization of two one-dimensional nonintegrable models: a quantum Ising chain with transverse and longitudinal fields, and hard-core bosons at half-filling with nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor hopping and interaction. We show that even the most extrem…
We investigate the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) for a translationally invariant quantum spin system on the $d$-dimensional cubic lattice under the periodic boundary conditions. It is known that the ETH holds in this model for typical energy eigenstates in the sense that the standard deviation of the expectation values of a local observable in the energy eigenstates within the microcanonical energy shell vanishes in the thermodynamic limit, which is called the weak ETH. Here, it is remarked that the diagonal elements of a local observable in the energy representation shows the lar…
By means of exact diagonalization, we investigate the onset of 'eigenstate thermalization' and the crossover to ergodicity in a system of 1D fermions with increasing interaction. We show that the fluctuations in the expectation values of the momentum distribution from eigenstate to eigenstate decrease with increasing coupling strength and system size. It turns out that these fluctuations are proportional to the inverse participation ratio of eigenstates represented in the Fock basis. We demonstrate that eigenstate thermalization should set in even for vanishingly small perturbations in the the…
A class of autonomous quantum heat baths satisfying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) criteria is proposed. We show that such systems are expected to cause thermal relaxation of much smaller quantum systems coupled to one of the baths local observables. The process of thermalization is examined through residual fluctuations of local observables of the bath around their thermal values predicted by ETH. It is shown that such fluctuations perturb the small quantum system causing its decoherence to the thermal state. As an example, we investigate theoretically and numerically thermali…
We study the characteristics of thermalizing and non-thermalizing operators in integrable theories as we turn on a non-integrable deformation. Specifically, we show that $σ^z$, an operator that thermalizes in the integrable transverse field Ising model, has mean matrix elements that resemble ETH, but with fluctuations around the mean that are sharply suppressed. This suppression rapidly dwindles as the Ising model becomes non-integrable by the turning on of a longitudinal field. We also construct a non-thermalizing operator in the integrable regime, which slowly approaches the ETH form as the …
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…
Generalized thermalization is a process that occurs in integrable systems in which unitary dynamics, e.g., following a quantum quench, results in states in which observables after equilibration are described by generalized Gibbs ensembles (GGEs). Here we discuss an emergent eigenstate construction that allows one to built emergent local Hamiltonians of which one eigenstate captures the entire generalized thermalization process following a global quantum quench. Specifically, we study the emergent eigenstate that describes the quantum dynamics of hard-core bosons in one dimension (1D) for which…
We show that macroscopic thermalization and transport impose constraints on matrix elements entering the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) ansatz and require them to be correlated. It is often assumed that the ETH reduces to Random Matrix Theory (RMT) below the Thouless energy scale. We show this conventional picture is not self-consistent. We prove that energy scale at which the RMT behavior emerges has to be parametrically smaller than the inverse timescale of the slowest thermalization mode coupled to the operator of interest. We argue that the timescale marking the onset of the RM…
Under unitary time evolution, expectation values of physically reasonable observables often evolve towards the predictions of equilibrium statistical mechanics. The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) states that this is also true already for individual energy eigenstates. Here we aim at elucidating the emergence of ETH for observables that can realistically be measured due to their high degeneracy, such as local, extensive or macroscopic observables. We bisect this problem into two parts, a condition on the relative overlaps and one on the relative phases between the eigenbases of the …
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 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…
The Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) explains emergence of the thermodynamic equilibrium by assuming a particular structure of observable's matrix elements in the energy eigenbasis. Schematically, it postulates that off-diagonal matrix elements are random numbers and the observables can be described by Random Matrix Theory (RMT). To what extent physical operators can be described by RMT, more precisely at which energy scale strict RMT description applies, is however not fully understood. We study this issue by introducing a novel numerical approach to probe correlations between matri…
The Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) has played a major role in understanding thermodynamic phenomena in closed quantum systems. However, its connection to the timescale of thermalization for open system dynamics has remained elusive. This paper establishes a rigorous link between ETH and fast thermalization to the global Gibbs state. Specifically, we demonstrate fast thermalization for a system coupled weakly to a bath of quasi-free Fermions that we refresh periodically. To describe the joint evolution, we derive a finite-time version of Davies' generator with explicit error bounds …
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…
We investigate the relation between the classical ergodicity and the quantum eigenstate thermalization in the fully connected Ising ferromagnets. In the case of spin-1/2, an expectation value of an observable in a single energy eigenstate coincides with the long-time average in the underlying classical dynamics, which is a consequence of the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximation. In the case of spin-1, the underlying classical dynamics is not necessarily ergodic. In that case, it turns out that, in the thermodynamic limit, the statistics of the expectation values of an observable in the ener…
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis is a compelling conjecture which strives to explain the apparent thermal behavior of generic observables in closed quantum systems. Although we are far from a complete analytic understanding, quantum chaos is often seen as a strong indication that the ansatz holds true. In this paper, we address the thermalization of energy eigenstates in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, a maximally chaotic model of strongly-interacting Majorana fermions. We numerically investigate eigenstate thermalization for specific few-body operators in the original SYK model as well a…
We study the matrix elements of few-body observables, focusing on the off-diagonal ones, in the eigenstates of the two-dimensional transverse field Ising model. By resolving all symmetries, we relate the onset of quantum chaos to the structure of the matrix elements. In particular, we show that a general result of the theory of random matrices, namely, the value 2 of the ratio of variances (diagonal to off-diagonal) of the matrix elements of Hermitian operators, occurs in the quantum chaotic regime. Furthermore, we explore the behavior of the off-diagonal matrix elements of observables as a fu…
According to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), the eigenstate-to-eigenstate fluctuations of expectation values of local observables should decrease with increasing system size. In approaching the thermodynamic limit - the number of sites and the particle number increasing at the same rate - the fluctuations should scale as $\sim D^{-1/2}$ with the Hilbert space dimension $D$. Here, we study a different limit - the classical or semiclassical limit - by increasing the particle number in fixed lattice topologies. We focus on the paradigmatic Bose-Hubbard system, which is quantum-cha…
By calculating correlation functions for the Lieb-Liniger model based on the algebraic Bethe ansatz method, we conduct a finite-size scaling analysis of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) which is considered to be a possible mechanism of thermalization in isolated quantum systems. We find that the ETH in the weak sense holds in the thermodynamic limit even for an integrable system although it does not hold in the strong sense. Based on the result of the finite-size scaling analysis, we compare the contribution of the weak ETH to thermalization with that of yet another thermalizatio…
