Prethermalization and the local robustness of gapped systems

TL;DR

This paper proves that prethermalization is a common feature in gapped local quantum systems under small perturbations, ensuring long-lived low-energy dynamics and robustness of quantum information across various phases.

Contribution

It extends rigorous results on prethermalization to general gapped systems, showing their stability and long-lived low-energy behavior under generic perturbations.

Findings

Prethermalization persists for stretched exponential times in gapped systems.

Quantum simulation in low-energy subspaces is robust against small perturbations.

Gapped phases exhibit long-lived quantum information and stability of false vacua.

Abstract

We prove that prethermalization is a generic property of gapped local many-body quantum systems, subjected to small perturbations, in any spatial dimension. More precisely, let $H_0$ be a Hamiltonian, spatially local in $d$ spatial dimensions, with a gap $\Delta$ in the many-body spectrum; let $V$ be a spatially local Hamiltonian consisting of a sum of local terms, each of which is bounded by $\epsilon \ll \Delta$. Then, the approximation that quantum dynamics is restricted to the low-energy subspace of $H_0$ is accurate, in the correlation functions of local operators, for stretched exponential time scale $\tau \sim \exp[(\Delta/\epsilon)^a]$ for any $a<1/(2d-1)$. This result does not depend on whether the perturbation closes the gap. It significantly extends previous rigorous results on prethermalization in models where $H_0$ was frustration-free. We infer the robustness of quantum simulation in low-energy subspaces, the existence of athermal ``scarred" correlation functions in gapped systems subject to generic perturbations, the long lifetime of false vacua in symmetry broken systems, and the robustness of quantum information in non-frustration-free gapped phases with topological order.