Macroscopic Thermalization for Highly Degenerate Hamiltonians After Slight Perturbation

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Roos, Barbara, Sugimoto, Shoki, Teufel, Stefan, Tumulka, Roderich, Vogel, Cornelia
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909705623830528
author Roos, Barbara
Sugimoto, Shoki
Teufel, Stefan
Tumulka, Roderich
Vogel, Cornelia
author_facet Roos, Barbara
Sugimoto, Shoki
Teufel, Stefan
Tumulka, Roderich
Vogel, Cornelia
contents We say of an isolated macroscopic quantum system in a pure state $ψ$ that it is in macroscopic thermal equilibrium (MATE) if $ψ$ lies in or close to a suitable subspace $\mathcal{H}_{eq}$ of Hilbert space. It is known that every initial state $ψ_0$ will eventually reach and stay there most of the time (``thermalize'') if the Hamiltonian is non-degenerate and satisfies the appropriate version of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), i.e., that every eigenvector is in MATE. Tasaki recently proved the ETH for a certain perturbation $H_θ^{fF}$ of the Hamiltonian $H_0^{fF}$ of $N\gg 1$ free fermions on a one-dimensional lattice. The perturbation is needed to remove the high degeneracies of $H_0^{fF}$. Here, we first point out that also for degenerate Hamiltonians all $ψ_0$ thermalize if the ETH holds, i.e., if every eigenbasis lies in MATE, and we prove that this is the case for $H_0^{fF}$. Inspired by the fact that there is one eigenbasis of $H_0^{fF}$ for which MATE can be proved more easily than for the others, with smaller error bounds, and also in higher spatial dimensions, we show for any given $H_0$ that the existence of one eigenbasis in MATE implies quite generally that most eigenbases of $H_0$ lie in MATE. We also show that, as a consequence, after adding a small generic perturbation, $H=H_0+λV$ with $λ\ll 1$, for most perturbations $V$ the perturbed Hamiltonian $H$ satisfies ETH and all states thermalize.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_15832
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Macroscopic Thermalization for Highly Degenerate Hamiltonians After Slight Perturbation
Roos, Barbara
Sugimoto, Shoki
Teufel, Stefan
Tumulka, Roderich
Vogel, Cornelia
Statistical Mechanics
Mathematical Physics
Quantum Physics
We say of an isolated macroscopic quantum system in a pure state $ψ$ that it is in macroscopic thermal equilibrium (MATE) if $ψ$ lies in or close to a suitable subspace $\mathcal{H}_{eq}$ of Hilbert space. It is known that every initial state $ψ_0$ will eventually reach and stay there most of the time (``thermalize'') if the Hamiltonian is non-degenerate and satisfies the appropriate version of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), i.e., that every eigenvector is in MATE. Tasaki recently proved the ETH for a certain perturbation $H_θ^{fF}$ of the Hamiltonian $H_0^{fF}$ of $N\gg 1$ free fermions on a one-dimensional lattice. The perturbation is needed to remove the high degeneracies of $H_0^{fF}$. Here, we first point out that also for degenerate Hamiltonians all $ψ_0$ thermalize if the ETH holds, i.e., if every eigenbasis lies in MATE, and we prove that this is the case for $H_0^{fF}$. Inspired by the fact that there is one eigenbasis of $H_0^{fF}$ for which MATE can be proved more easily than for the others, with smaller error bounds, and also in higher spatial dimensions, we show for any given $H_0$ that the existence of one eigenbasis in MATE implies quite generally that most eigenbases of $H_0$ lie in MATE. We also show that, as a consequence, after adding a small generic perturbation, $H=H_0+λV$ with $λ\ll 1$, for most perturbations $V$ the perturbed Hamiltonian $H$ satisfies ETH and all states thermalize.
title Macroscopic Thermalization for Highly Degenerate Hamiltonians After Slight Perturbation
topic Statistical Mechanics
Mathematical Physics
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.15832