Initial state dependence of the quench dynamics in integrable quantum systems. II. Thermal states

TL;DR

This paper investigates how integrable quantum systems behave after a sudden quench from thermal states, revealing differences in entropy and conserved quantities that prevent thermalization, with finite size scaling analysis for large systems.

Contribution

It demonstrates that even from thermal initial states, integrable systems do not thermalize and characterizes the differences in entropy and conserved quantities post-quench.

Findings

Diagonal entropy remains a fraction of generalized ensemble entropy

Distributions of conserved quantities differ between thermal and generalized ensembles

Finite size scaling predicts behavior in large lattice systems

Abstract

We study properties of isolated integrable quantum systems after a sudden quench starting from thermal states. We show that, even if the system is initially in thermal equilibrium at finite temperature, the diagonal entropy after a quench remains a fraction of the entropy in the generalized ensembles introduced to describe integrable systems after relaxation. The latter is also, in general, different from the entropy in thermal equilibrium. Furthermore, we examine the difference between the distribution of conserved quantities in the thermal and generalized ensembles after a quench and show that they are also, in general, different from each other. This explains why these systems fail to thermalize. A finite size scaling analysis is presented for each quantity, which allows us making predictions for thermodynamically large lattice sizes.