Assigning temperatures to eigenstates

Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review

Contributors

  • Phillip C. Burke - , National University of Ireland Maynooth (Author)
  • Goran Nakerst - , Chair of Theoretical Solid State Physics, National University of Ireland Maynooth, TUD Dresden University of Technology (Author)
  • Masudul Haque - , Chair of Theoretical Solid State Physics, National University of Ireland Maynooth, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Max-Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (Author)

Abstract

In the study of thermalization in finite isolated quantum systems, an inescapable issue is the definition of temperature. We examine and compare different possible ways of assigning temperatures to energies or equivalently to eigenstates in such systems. A commonly used assignment of temperature in the context of thermalization is based on the canonical energy-temperature relationship, which depends only on energy eigenvalues and not on the structure of eigenstates. For eigenstates, we consider defining temperature by minimizing the distance between (full or reduced) eigenstate density matrices and canonical density matrices. We show that for full eigenstates, the minimizing temperature depends on the distance measure chosen and matches the canonical temperature for the trace distance; however, the two matrices are not close. With reduced density matrices, the minimizing temperature has fluctuations that scale with subsystem and system size but appears to be independent of distance measure. In particular limits, the two matrices become equivalent while the temperature tends to the canonical temperature.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number024102
JournalPhysical Review E
Volume107
Issue number2
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2023
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

PubMed 36932575