Generalized Gibbs Ensemble Research Articles

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Preparation of Thermal and Prethermal Quantum States

We propose a method based on deep reinforcement learning that efficiently prepares a quantum many-body pure state in thermal or prethermal equilibrium. The main physical intuition underlying the method is that the information on the equilibrium states can be efficiently encoded/extracted by focusing on only a few local observables, relying on the typicality of equilibrium states. Instead of resorting to the expensive preparation protocol that adopts global features such as the quantum state fidelity, we show that the equilibrium states can be efficiently prepared only by learning the expectation values of local observables. We demonstrate our method by preparing two illustrative examples: Gibbs ensembles in non-integrable systems and generalized Gibbs ensembles in integrable systems. Pure states prepared solely from local observables are numerically shown to successfully encode the macroscopic properties of the equilibrium states. Furthermore, we find that the preparation errors, with respect to the system size, decay exponentially for Gibbs ensembles and polynomially for generalized Gibbs ensembles, which are in agreement with the finite-size fluctuation within thermodynamic ensembles. Our method paves a path toward studying the thermodynamic and statistical properties of quantum many-body systems in quantum hardware.

Free-fermion Page curve: Canonical typicality and dynamical emergence

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-fermion Page curve emerges with unexpectedly high accuracy in some simple tight binding models in long-time quench dynamics. This contributes a rare analytical result concerning quantum thermalization on a macroscopic scale, where conventional paradigms such as the generalized Gibbs ensemble and quasi-particle picture are not applicable.

Universal bounds on quantum mechanics through energy conservation and the bootstrap method

Abstract The range of motion of a particle with certain energy E confined in a potential is determined from the energy conservation law in classical mechanics. The counterpart of this question in quantum mechanics can be regarded as what is the possible range of expectation values of the position operator 〈x〉 of a particle that satisfies E = 〈H〉. This range depends on the state of the particle, but the universal upper and lower bounds, which are independent of the state, must exist. In this study, we show that these bounds can be derived by using the bootstrap method. We also point out that the bootstrap method can be regarded as a generalization of the uncertainty relations, meaning that the bounds are determined by the uncertainty relations in a broad sense. Furthermore, the bounds on possible expectation values of various quantities other than position can be determined in the same way. However, in the case of multiple identical particles (bosons and fermions), we find some difficulty in the bootstrap method. Because of this issue, the predictive power of the bootstrap method in multi-particle systems is limited in the derivation of observables including energy eigenstates. In addition, we argue an application of the bootstrap method to thermal equilibrium states. We find serious issues that temperature and entropy cannot be handled. Although we have these issues, we can derive some quantities in micro-canonical ensembles of integrable systems governed by generalized Gibbs ensembles.

Large deviations for Ablowitz-Ladik lattice, and the Schur flow

We consider the Generalized Gibbs ensembles of the Ablowitz-Ladik lattice and of the Schur flow. We derive large deviations principles for the distribution of the empirical measures for these ensembles. As a consequence, we deduce their almost sure convergence. Moreover, we are able to characterize their limits in terms of the equilibrium measure of the Circular, and the Jacobi beta ensemble, respectively.

Chaos and bipartite entanglement between Bose-Josephson junctions.

The entanglement between two weakly coupled bosonic Josephson junctions is studied in relation to the classical mixed phasespace structure of the system, containing symmetry-related regular islands separated by chaos. The symmetry-resolved entanglement spectrum and bipartite entanglement entropy of the system's energy eigenstates are calculated and compared to their expected structure for random states that exhibit complete or partial ergodicity. The entanglement spectra of chaos-supported eigenstates match the microcanonical structure of a Generalized Gibbs Ensemble due to the existence of an adiabatic invariant that restricts ergodization on the energy shell. The symmetry-resolved entanglement entropy of these quasistochastic states consists of a mean-field maximum entanglement term and a fluctuation correction due to the finite size of the constituent subsystems. The total bipartite entanglement entropy of the eigenstates correlates with their chaoticity. Island-supported eigenstates are macroscopic Schrödinger cat states for particles and excitations with substantially lower entanglement.

Relaxation to a Parity-Time Symmetric Generalized Gibbs Ensemble after a Quantum Quench in a Driven-Dissipative Kitaev Chain.

The construction of the generalized Gibbs ensemble, to which isolated integrable quantum many-body systems relax after a quantum quench, is based upon the principle of maximum entropy. In contrast, there are no universal and model-independent laws that govern the relaxation dynamics and stationary states of open quantum systems, which are subjected to Markovian drive and dissipation. Yet, as we show, relaxation of driven-dissipative systems after a quantum quench can, in fact, be determined by a maximum entropy ensemble, if the Liouvillian that generates the dynamics of the system has parity-time symmetry. Focusing on the specific example of a driven-dissipative Kitaev chain, we show that, similar to isolated integrable systems, the approach to a parity-time symmetric generalized Gibbs ensemble becomes manifest in the relaxation of local observables and the dynamics of subsystem entropies. In contrast, the directional pumping of fermion parity, which is induced by nontrivial non-Hermitian topology of the Kitaev chain, represents a phenomenon that is unique to relaxation dynamics in driven-dissipative systems. Upon increasing the strength of dissipation, parity-time symmetry is broken at a finite critical value, which thus constitutes a sharp dynamical transition that delimits the applicability of the principle of maximum entropy. We show that these results, which we obtain for the specific example of the Kitaev chain, apply to broad classes of noninteracting fermionic models, and we discuss their generalization to a noninteracting bosonic model and an interacting spin chain.

Y-systems for generalised Gibbs ensembles in integrable quantum field theory

The thermodynamic Bethe ansatz approach to the study of integrable quantum field theories was introduced in the early 90s. Since then it has been known that the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz equations can be recast in the form of Y-systems. These Y-systems have a number of interesting properties, notably in the high-temperature limit their solutions are constants from which the central charge of the ultraviolet fixed point can be obtained and they are typically periodic functions, with period proportional to the dimension of the perturbing field. In this letter we discuss the derivation of Y-systems when the standard thermodynamic Bethe ansatz equations are replaced by generalised versions, describing generalised Gibbs ensembles. We shown that for many integrable quantum field theories, there is a large class of distinct generalised Gibbs ensembles which share the same Y-system.

Nonlocality as the source of purely quantum dynamics of BCS superconductors

We show that the classical (mean-field) description of far from equilibrium superconductivity is exact in the thermodynamic limit for local observables but breaks down for global quantities, such as the entanglement entropy or Loschmidt echo. We do this by solving for and comparing exact quantum and exact classical long-time dynamics of a BCS superconductor with interaction strength inversely proportional to time and evaluating local observables explicitly. Mean field is exact for both normal and anomalous averages (superconducting order) in the thermodynamic limit. However, for anomalous expectation values, this limit does not commute with adiabatic and strong coupling limits and, as a consequence, their quantum fluctuations can be unusually strong. The long-time steady state of the system is a gapless superconductor whose superfluid properties are only accessible through energy resolved measurements. This state is nonthermal but conforms to an emergent generalized Gibbs ensemble. Our study clarifies the nature of symmetry-broken many-body states in and out of equilibrium and fills a crucial gap in the theory of time-dependent quantum integrability.

Spectrum of quantum KdV hierarchy in the semiclassical limit

We employ semiclassical quantization to calculate spectrum of quantum KdV charges in the limit of large central charge c. Classically, KdV charges Q2n−1 generate completely integrable dynamics on the co-adjoint orbit of the Virasoro algebra. They can be expressed in terms of action variables Ik, e.g. as a power series expansion. Quantum-mechanically this series becomes the expansion in 1/c, while action variables become integer-valued quantum numbers ni. Crucially, classical expression, which is homogeneous in Ik, acquires quantum corrections that include terms of subleading powers in nk. At first two non-trivial orders in 1/c expansion these “quantum” terms can be fixed from the analytic form of Q2n−1 acting on the primary states. In this way we find explicit expression for the spectrum of Q2n−1 up to first three orders in 1/c expansion. We apply this result to study thermal expectation values of Q2n−1 and free energy of the KdV Generalized Gibbs Ensemble.

Generalised Gibbs Ensemble for spherically constrained harmonic models

We build and analytically calculate the Generalised Gibbs Ensemble partition function of the integrable Soft Neumann Model. This is the model of a classical particle which is constrained to move, on average over the initial conditions, on an NN dimensional sphere, and feels the effect of anisotropic harmonic potentials. We derive all relevant averaged static observables in the (thermodynamic) N\to\inftyN→∞ limit. We compare them to their long-term dynamic averages finding excellent agreement in all phases of a non-trivial phase diagram determined by the characteristics of the initial conditions and the amount of energy injected or extracted in an instantaneous quench. We discuss the implications of our results for the proper Neumann model in which the spherical constraint is imposed strictly.

Generalized Gibbs ensemble description of real-space entanglement spectra of (2+1) -dimensional chiral topological systems with SU(2) symmetry

We provide a quantitative analysis of the splittings in low-lying numerical entanglement spectra (ES), at given momentum, of a number of quantum states that can be identified, based on "Li-Haldane state-counting", as ground states of (2+1)-dimensional chiral topological phases with global SU(2) symmetry. The ability to account for numerical ES splittings solely within the context of conformal field theory (CFT) is an additional diagnostic of the underlying topological theory, of finer sensitivity than "state-counting". We use the conformal boundary state description of the ES, which can be viewed as a quantum quench. In this language, the ES splittings arise from local conservation laws in the chiral CFT besides the energy, which we view as a Generalized Gibbs Ensemble (GGE). Global SU(2) symmetry imposes strong constraints on the number of such conservation laws, so that only a small number of parameters can be responsible for the splittings. We work out these conservation laws for chiral SU(2) Wess-Zumino-Witten CFTs at levels one and two, and for the latter we notably find that some of the conservation laws take the form of local integrals of operators of fractional dimension, as proposed by Cardy for quantum quenches. We analyze numerical ES from systems with SU(2) symmetry including chiral spin-liquid ground states of local 2D Hamiltonians and two chiral Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS) tensor networks, which exhibit the "state-counting" of the SU(2)-level-one and -level-two theories. We find that the low-lying ES splittings can be well understood by the lowest of our conservation laws, and we demonstrate the importance of accounting for the fractional conservation laws at level two. Thus the states we consider, including the PEPS, appear chiral also under our more sensitive diagnostic.

Experimental verification of generalized eigenstate thermalization hypothesis in an integrable system

Identifying the general mechanics behind the equilibration of a complex isolated quantum system towards a state described by only a few parameters has been the focus of attention in non-equilibrium thermodynamics. And several experimentally unproven conjectures are proposed for the statistical description of quantum (non-)integrable models. The plausible eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), which suggests that each energy eigenstate itself is thermal, plays a crucial role in understanding the quantum thermalization in non-integrable systems; it is commonly believed that it does not exist in integrable systems. Nevertheless, integrable systems can still relax to the generalized Gibbs ensemble. From a microscopic perspective, understanding the origin of this generalized thermalization that occurs in an isolated integrable system is a fundamental open question lacking experimental investigations. Herein, we experimentally investigated the spin subsystem relaxation in an isolated spin–orbit coupling quantum system. By applying the quantum state engineering technique, we initialized the system with various distribution widths in the mutual eigenbasis of the conserved quantities. Then, we compared the steady state of the spin subsystem reached in a long-time coherent dynamics to the prediction of a generalized version of ETH and the underlying mechanism of the generalized thermalization is experimentally verified for the first time. Our results facilitate understanding the origin of quantum statistical mechanics.

Free fermions, KdV charges, generalised Gibbs ensembles and modular transforms

In this paper we consider the modular properties of generalised Gibbs ensembles in the Ising model, realised as a theory of one free massless fermion. The Gibbs ensembles are given by adding chemical potentials to chiral charges corresponding to the KdV conserved quantities. (They can also be thought of as simple models for extended characters for the W-algebras). The eigenvalues and Gibbs ensembles for the charges can be easily calculated exactly using their expression as bilinears in the fermion fields. We re-derive the constant term in the charges, previously found by zeta-function regularisation, from modular properties. We expand the Gibbs ensembles as a power series in the chemical potentials and find the modular properties of the corresponding expectation values of polynomials of KdV charges. This leads us to an asymptotic expansion of the Gibbs ensemble calculated in the opposite channel. We obtain the same asymptotic expansion using Dijkgraaf’s results for chiral partition functions. By considering the corresponding TBA calculation, we are led to a conjecture for the exact closed-form expression of the GGE in the opposite channel. This has the form of a trace over multiple copies of the fermion Fock space. We give analytic and numerical evidence supporting our conjecture.

Characterizing Symmetry-Protected Thermal Equilibrium by Work Extraction

The second law of thermodynamics states that work cannot be extracted from thermal equilibrium, whose quantum formulation is known as complete passivity; a state is called completely passive if work cannot be extracted from any number of copies of the state by any unitary operations. It has been established that a quantum state is completely passive if and only if it is a Gibbs ensemble. In physically plausible setups, however, the class of possible operations is often restricted by fundamental constraints such as symmetries imposed on the system. In the present work, we investigate the concept of complete passivity under symmetry constraints. Specifically, we prove that a quantum state is completely passive under a symmetry constraint described by a connected compact Lie group, if and only if it is a generalized Gibbs ensemble including conserved charges associated with the symmetry. Remarkably, our result applies to noncommutative symmetry such as SU(2) symmetry, suggesting an unconventional extension of the notion of generalized Gibbs ensemble. Furthermore, we consider the setup where a quantum work storage is explicitly included, and prove that the characterization of complete passivity remains unchanged. Our result extends the notion of thermal equilibrium to systems protected by symmetries, and would lead to flexible design principles of quantum heat engines and batteries. Moreover, our approach serves as a foundation of the resource theory of thermodynamics in the presence of symmetries.Received 2 August 2021Revised 7 February 2022Accepted 17 February 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.12.021013Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasQuantum statistical mechanicsQuantum thermodynamicsResource theoriesQuantum InformationStatistical Physics

Bloch theorem in the presence of an additional conserved charge

The Bloch theorem is a general theorem restricting the persistent current associated with a conserved U(1) charge in a ground state or in a thermal equilibrium. It gives an upper bound of the magnitude of the current density, which is inversely proportional to the system size. In a recent paper, Else and Senthil applied the argument for the Bloch theorem to a generalized Gibbs ensemble, assuming the presence of an additional conserved charge, and predicted a nonzero current density in the nonthermal steady state [D. V. Else and T. Senthil, Phys. Rev. B 104, 205132 (2021)]. In this work, we provide a complementary derivation based on the canonical ensemble, given that the additional charge is strictly conserved within the system by itself. Furthermore, using the example where the additional conserved charge is the momentum operator, we discuss that the persistent current tends to vanish when the system is in contact with an external momentum reservoir in the co-moving frame of the reservoir.

Exploring nonequilibrium phases of photo-doped Mott insulators with generalized Gibbs ensembles

Many experiments show that strong excitations of correlated quantum materials can cause non-thermal phases without equilibrium analogues. Understanding the origin and properties of these nonequilibrium states has been challenging due to the limitations of theoretical methods for nonequilibrium strongly correlated systems. In this work, we introduce a generalized Gibbs ensemble description that enables a systematic analysis of the long-time behavior of photo-doped states in Mott insulators based on equilibrium methods. We demonstrate the power of the method by mapping out the nonequilibrium phase diagram of the one-dimensional extended Hubbard model, which features η-pairing and charge density wave phases in a wide photo-doping range. We furthermore clarify that the peculiar kinematics of photo-doped carriers, and the interaction between them, play an essential role in the formation of these non-thermal phases. Our results establish a new path for the systematic analysis of nonequilibrium strongly correlated systems.

Non-Abelian Quantum Transport and Thermosqueezing Effects

Modern quantum experiments provide examples of transport with noncommuting quantities, offering a tool to understand the interplay between thermal and quantum effects. Here we set forth a theory for non-Abelian transport in the linear response regime. Our key insight is to use generalized Gibbs ensembles with noncommuting charges as the basic building blocks and strict charge-preserving unitaries in a collisional setup. The linear response framework is then built using a collisional model between two reservoirs. We show that the transport coefficients obey Onsager reciprocity. Moreover, we find that quantum coherence, associated with the noncommutativity, acts so as to reduce the net entropy production, when compared to the case of commuting transport. This therefore provides a clear connection between quantum coherent transport and dissipation. As an example, we study heat and squeezing fluxes in bosonic systems, characterizing a set of thermosqueezing coefficients with potential applications in metrology and heat-to-work conversion in the quantum regime.Received 13 November 2020Revised 16 March 2021Accepted 6 December 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.010304Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasNonequilibrium & irreversible thermodynamicsQuantum coherence & coherence measuresQuantum thermodynamicsQuantum transportSqueezing of quantum noisePhysical SystemsQuantum heat engines & refrigeratorsTechniquesInformation theoryLinear response theoryQuantum InformationStatistical PhysicsAtomic, Molecular & Optical

Large deviations for Gibbs ensembles of the classical Toda chain

We prove large deviation principles for the distribution of the empirical measure of the eigenvalues of Lax matrices following the Generalized Gibbs ensembles of the classical Toda chain introduced in [9]. We deduce the almost sure convergence of this empirical measure towards a limit which we describe in terms of the limiting empirical measure of Beta-ensembles. Our results apply to general smooth potentials.

Form factors and generalized hydrodynamics for integrable systems

Our review covers microscopic foundations of generalized hydrodynamics (GHD). As one generic approach we develop form factor expansions, for ground states and generalized Gibbs ensembles (GGE). In the latter case the so obtained results are compared with predictions from GHD. One cornerstone of GHD are the GGE averaged microscopic currents, which can also be obtained through employing form factors. Discussed is a second, completely orthogonal approach based on the availability of a self-conserved current.

Nonequilibrium thermodynamics of self-supervised learning

Self-supervised learning (SSL) of energy based models has an intuitive relation to equilibrium thermodynamics because the softmax layer, mapping energies to probabilities, is a Gibbs distribution. However, in what way SSL is a thermodynamic process? We show that some SSL paradigms behave as a thermodynamic composite system formed by representations and self-labels in contact with a nonequilibrium reservoir. Moreover, this system is subjected to usual thermodynamic cycles, such as adiabatic expansion and isochoric heating, resulting in a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE). In this picture, we show that learning is seen as a demon that operates in cycles using feedback measurements to extract negative work from the system. As applications, we examine some SSL algorithms using this idea.