1995/01/01 by Jaeyoon Cho, M. S. Kim, Luis Ferruz Agudo · 1 citation
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Business #Canonical ensemble #Comparative International Legal Studies #Eigenvalues and eigenvectors #Hamiltonian (control theory) #Mathematics #Non-equilibrium thermodynamics #Physics #Quantum #Quantum chaos and dynamical systems #Quantum dynamics #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Quantum statistical mechanics #Quantum system #Random matrix #Statistical physics #Theoretical physics #Unitary state #cond-mat.stat-mech #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.104.170402
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 170402 (2010)
openalex publication_date 1995/01/01 · arxiv created 2010/04/27 · arxiv updated 2010/04/28 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/04/28
We consider a system weakly interacting with a bath as a thermodynamic setting to establish a quantum foundation of statistical physics. It is shown that even if the composite system is initially in an arbitrary nonequilibrium pure quantum state, the unitary dynamics of a generic weak interaction almost always drives the subsystem into the canonical ensemble, in the usual sense of typicality. A crucial step is taken by assuming that the matrix elements of the interaction Hamiltonian have random phases, while their amplitudes are left unrestricted.