Initial state dependence of the quench dynamics in integrable quantum systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how certain initial states in integrable quantum systems influence the relaxation dynamics, showing that some states lead to near-thermal expectation values and elucidating the role of conserved quantities in this process.

Contribution

It identifies classes of initial states in integrable systems that produce near-thermal observables after relaxation and analyzes how tuning parameters affect their approach to thermal behavior.

Findings

Initial states as insulating ground states lead to near-thermal observables.

Adjusting parameters makes states closer to Fock states, aligning relaxation outcomes with thermal predictions.

Finite-size analysis indicates this is not true thermalization as in nonintegrable systems.

Abstract

We identify and study classes of initial states in integrable quantum systems that, after the relaxation dynamics following a sudden quench, lead to near-thermal expectation values of few-body observables. In the systems considered here, those states are found to be insulating ground states of lattice hard-core boson Hamiltonians. We show that, as a suitable parameter in the initial Hamiltonian is changed, those states become closer to Fock states (products of single site states) as the outcome of the relaxation dynamics becomes closer to the thermal prediction. At the same time, the energy density approaches a Gaussian. Furthermore, the entropy associated with the generalized canonical and generalized grand-canonical ensembles, introduced to describe observables in integrable systems after relaxation, approaches that of the conventional canonical and grand-canonical ensembles. We argue that those classes of initial states are special because a control parameter allows one to tune the distribution of conserved quantities to approach the one in thermal equilibrium. This helps in understanding the approach of all the quantities studied to their thermal expectation values. However, a finite-size scaling analysis shows that this behavior should not be confused with thermalization as understood for nonintegrable systems.