Despite the unitary evolution of closed quantum systems, long-time expectation of local observables are well described by thermal ensembles, providing the foundation of quantum statistical mechanics. A promising route to understanding this quantum thermalization is the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), which posits that individual energy eigenstates already appear locally thermal. Subsequent studies have extended this concept to the full ETH, which captures higher-order correlations among matrix elements through nontrivial relations. In this work, we perform a detailed exact-diagonalization study of finite-size corrections to these relations in the canonical ensemble. We distinguish two distinct sources of corrections: those arising from energy fluctuations, which decay polynomially with system size, and those originating from fluctuations within each energy window, which decay exponentially with system size. In particular, our analysis resolves the puzzle that, for certain observables, finite-size corrections exhibit anomalous growth with increasing system size even in chaotic systems. Our results provide a systematic and practical methodology for validating the full ETH in quantum many-body systems.
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…
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…
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.
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.
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…
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.
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…
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.
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 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…
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…
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 use exact diagonalization to study the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) in the quantum dimer model on the square and triangular lattices. Due to the nonergodicity of the local plaquette-flip dynamics, the Hilbert space, which consists of highly constrained close-packed dimer configurations, splits into sectors characterized by topological invariants. We show that this has important consequences for ETH: We find that ETH is clearly satisfied only when each topological sector is treated separately, and only for moderate ratios of the potential and kinetic terms in the Hamiltonian. B…
Motivated by recent ion experiments on tunable long-range interacting quantum systems [B.Neyenhuis et al., Sci.Adv.3, e1700672 (2017, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1700672 )], we test the strong eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) for systems with power-law interactions $\sim 1/r^α$. We numerically demonstrate that the strong ETH typically holds at least for systems with $α\geq 0.6$, which include Coulomb, monopole-dipole, and dipole-dipole interactions. Compared with short-range interacting systems, the eigenstate expectation value of a generic local observable is shown to deviate sig…
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…
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…
We consider a quantum system A U B made up of degrees of freedom that can be partitioned into spatially disjoint regions A and B. When the full system is in a pure state in which regions A and B are entangled, the quantum mechanics of region A described without reference to its complement is traditionally assumed to require a reduced density matrix on A. While this is certainly true as an exact matter, we argue that under many interesting circumstances expectation values of typical operators anywhere inside A can be computed from a suitable pure state on A alone, with a controlled error. We us…
We study the validity of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) and its role for the occurrence of initial-state independent (ISI) equilibration in closed quantum many-body systems. Using the concept of dynamical typicality, we present an extensive numerical analysis of energy exchange in integrable and nonintegrable spin-1/2 systems of large size outside the range of exact diagonalization. In case of nonintegrable systems, our finite-size scaling shows that the ETH becomes valid in the thermodynamic limit and can serve as the underlying mechanism for ISI equilibration. In case of inte…
We study the long-time average of the reduced density matrix (RDM) of an $m$-level central system, which is locally coupled to a large environment, under an overall Schrödinger evolution of the total system. We consider a class of interaction Hamiltonian, whose environmental part satisfies the so-called eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) ansatz with a constant diagonal part in the energy region concerned. On the eigenbasis of the central system's Hamiltonian, $\frac{1}{2}(m-1)(m+2)$ relations among elements of the averaged RDM are derived. When steady states exist, these relations impl…
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…
We derive the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) from a random matrix Hamiltonian by extending the model introduced by J. M. Deutsch [Phys. Rev. A 43, 2046 (1991)]. We approximate the coupling between a subsystem and a many-body environment by means of a random Gaussian matrix. We show that a common assumption in the analysis of quantum chaotic systems, namely the treatment of eigenstates as independent random vectors, leads to inconsistent results. However, a consistent approach to the ETH can be developed by introducing an interaction between random wave-functions that arises as a re…
This work aims at understanding the interplay between the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH), initial state independent equilibration and quantum chaos in systems that do not have a direct classical counterpart. It is based on numerical investigations of asymmetric Heisenberg spin ladders with varied interaction strengths between the legs, i.e., along the rungs. The relaxation of the energy difference between the legs is investigated. Two different parameters, both intended to quantify the degree of accordance with the ETH, are computed. Both indicate violation of the ETH at large inte…
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…
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 study the matrix elements of local and nonlocal operators in the single-particle eigenstates of two paradigmatic quantum-chaotic quadratic Hamiltonians; the quadratic Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK2) model and the three-dimensional Anderson model below the localization transition. We show that they display eigenstate thermalization for normalized observables. Specifically, we show that the diagonal matrix elements exhibit vanishing eigenstate-to-eigenstate fluctuations, and a variance proportional to the inverse Hilbert space dimension. We also demonstrate that the ratio between the variance of the…
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.
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）
An isolated quantum many-body system in an initial pure state will come to thermal equilibrium if it satisfies the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). We consider alternatives to ETH that have been proposed. We first show that von Neumann's quantum ergodic theorem relies on an assumption that is essentially equivalent to ETH. We also investigate whether, following a sudden quench, special classes of pure states can lead to thermal behavior in systems that do not obey ETH, namely, integrable systems. We find examples of this, but only for initial states that obeyed ETH before the quench…
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…
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 …
Integrable systems do not obey the strong eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), which has been proposed as a mechanism of thermalization in isolated quantum systems. It has been suggested that an integrable system reaches a steady state described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE) instead of thermal equilibrium. We prove that a generalized version of the strong ETH holds for noninteracting integrable systems with translation invariance. Our generalized ETH states that any pair of energy eigenstates with similar values of local conserved quantities looks similar with respect to local o…
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…
Many phases of matter, including superconductors, fractional quantum Hall fluids and spin liquids, are described by gauge theories with constrained Hilbert spaces. However, thermalization and the applicability of quantum statistical mechanics has primarily been studied in unconstrained Hilbert spaces. In this article, we investigate whether constrained Hilbert spaces permit local thermalization. Specifically, we explore whether the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) holds in a pinned Fibonacci anyon chain, which serves as a representative case study. We first establish that the constra…
