Emergence of a thermal equilibrium in a subsystem of a pure ground state by quantum entanglement

Abstract

By numerically exact calculations of spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg models on small clusters, we demonstrate that quantum entanglement between subsystems $A$ and $B$ in a pure ground state of a whole system $A+B$ can induce thermal equilibrium in subsystem $A$. Here, the whole system is bipartitoned with the entanglement cut that covers the entire volume of subsystem $A$. Temperature ${\cal T}_{A}$ of subsystem $A$ is not a parameter but can be determined from the entanglement von Neumann entropy ${\cal S}_{A}$ and the total energy ${\cal E}_{A}$ of subsystem $A$ calculated for the ground state of the whole system. We show that temperature ${\cal T}_{A}$ can be derived by minimizing the relative entropy for the reduced density matrix operator of subsystem $A$ and the Gibbs state (i.e., thermodynamic density matrix operator) of subsystem $A$ with respect to the coupling strength between subsystems $A$ and $B$. Temperature ${\cal T}_{A}$ is essentially identical to the thermodynamic temperature, for which the entropy and the internal energy evaluated using the canonical ensemble in statistical mechanics for the isolated subsystem $A$ agree numerically with the entanglement entropy ${\cal S}_{A}$ and the total energy ${\cal E}_{A}$ of subsystem $A$.Fidelity calculations ascertain that the reduced density matrix operator of subsystem $A$ for the pure but entangled ground state of the whole system $A+B$ matches, within a maximally $1.5\%$ error in the finite size clusters studied, the thermodynamic density matrix operator of subsystem $A$ at temperature ${\cal T}_{A}$. We argue that quantum fluctuation in an entangled pure state can mimic thermal fluctuation in a subsystem. We also provide two simple but nontrivial analytical examples of free bosons and free fermions for which these statements are exact. We furthermore discuss implications and possible applications of our finding.