Complete generalized Gibbs ensembles in an interacting theory

Journal article

In integrable many-particle systems, it is widely believed that the stationary state reached at late times after a quantum quench can be described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE) constructed from their extensive number of conserved charges. A crucial issue is then to identify a complete set of these charges, enabling the GGE to provide exact steady-state predictions. Here we solve this long-standing problem for the case of the spin- 1 / 2 Heisenberg chain by explicitly constructing a GGE which uniquely fixes the macrostate describing the stationary behavior after a general quantum quench. A crucial ingredient in our method, which readily generalizes to other integrable models, are recently discovered quasilocal charges. As a test, we reproduce the exact postquench steady state of the Néel quench problem obtained previously by means of the Quench Action method.

Authors: Ilievski, E; De Nardis, J; Wouters, B; Caux, J; Essler, F

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Journal: Physical Review Letters
• Volume: 115
• Issue: 15
• Article number: 157201
• Publication date: 2015-10-07
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.157201
• EISSN: 1079-7114
• ISSN: 0031-9007
• Pmid: 26550747
• Language: English
• Keywords: SBTMR