arXiv · 2503.21884
Taking the temperature of quantum many-body scars
Abstract
A quantum many-body scar is an eigenstate of a chaotic many-body Hamiltonian that exhibits two seemingly incongruous properties: its energy eigenvalue corresponds to a high temperature, yet its entanglement structure resembles that of low-temperature eigenstates, such as ground states. Traditionally, a temperature is assigned to an energy \emph{eigenvalue} through the textbook canonical temperature-energy relationship. However, in this work, we use the \emph{eigenstate subsystem temperature} -- a recently developed quantity that assigns a temperature to an energy eigenstate, based on the structure of its reduced density matrix. For a thermal state, the eigenstate subsystem temperature is approximately equal to its canonical temperature. Given that quantum many-body scars have a ground-state-like entanglement structure, it is not immediately clear that their eigenstate subsystem temperature would be close to their canonical temperature. Surprisingly, we find that this is the case: the quantum many-body scars have approximate ``knowledge'' of their position in the spectrum encoded within their state structure.
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Phillip C. Burke, Shane Dooley. 2025-03-27. Taking the temperature of quantum many-body scars. https://doi.org/10.1103/ytqp-jml7
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