Squeezed ensembles and anomalous dynamic roughening in interacting integrable chains

Abstract

It is widely accepted that local subsystems in isolated integrable quantum systems equilibrate to generalized Gibbs ensembles. Here, we demonstrate the failure of canonical generalized thermalization for a particular class of initial states in certain types of interacting integrable models. Particularly, we show that in the easy-axis regime of the quantum XXZ chain, pure non-equilibrium initial states with no magnetic fluctuations instead locally relax to squeezed generalized Gibbs ensembles, referring to exotic equilibrium states governed by non-local equilibrium Hamiltonians with sub-extensive charge fluctuations that violate the self-affine scaling. The behaviour at the isotropic point is exceptional and depends on the initial state. We find that relaxation from the Néel state is governed by extensive fluctuations and a super-diffusive dynamical exponent compatible with the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality. On the other hand, there are other non-fluctuating initial states that display diffusive scaling. Our predictions can be directly tested in state-of-the-art cold atomic experimental settings.

typos corrected, refs added