arXiv · 2603.12234
Thermalisation as Diffusion in Hilbert Space
Abstract
We develop a microscopic theory of thermalisation for a thermometer coupled to a many-body bath beyond standard Markovian and Fermi-golden-rule assumptions. By modeling interaction matrix elements in the non-interacting basis as independent random variables, we derive a diffusion-propagator expression for the reduced dynamics and show that relaxation is controlled by the distribution of interaction-induced level broadenings. The theory predicts a thermalisation timescale set by the inverse typical broadening and yields a non-Markovian generalization of global balance. Exact-diagonalization tests for heavy-tailed L{\'e}vy couplings, an all-to-all transverse-field Ising model, and the one-dimensional Imbrie model show good agreement with these predictions.
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Aleksey Lunkin. 2026-03-12. Thermalisation as Diffusion in Hilbert Space. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.12234
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