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Undecidability in quantum thermalization

Nature Communications, ISSN: 2041-1723, Vol: 12, Issue: 1, Page: 5084
2021
  • 14
    Citations
  • 0
    Usage
  • 89
    Captures
  • 2
    Mentions
  • 21
    Social Media
Metric Options:   Counts1 Year3 Year

Metrics Details

  • Citations
    14
    • Citation Indexes
      14
  • Captures
    89
  • Mentions
    2
    • News Mentions
      2
      • 2
  • Social Media
    21
    • Shares, Likes & Comments
      21
      • Facebook
        21

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Article Description

The investigation of thermalization in isolated quantum many-body systems has a long history, dating back to the time of developing statistical mechanics. Most quantum many-body systems in nature are considered to thermalize, while some never achieve thermal equilibrium. The central problem is to clarify whether a given system thermalizes, which has been addressed previously, but not resolved. Here, we show that this problem is undecidable. The resulting undecidability even applies when the system is restricted to one-dimensional shift-invariant systems with nearest-neighbour interaction, and the initial state is a fixed product state. We construct a family of Hamiltonians encoding dynamics of a reversible universal Turing machine, where the fate of a relaxation process changes considerably depending on whether the Turing machine halts. Our result indicates that there is no general theorem, algorithm, or systematic procedure determining the presence or absence of thermalization in any given Hamiltonian.

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