Noncommutative generalized Gibbs ensemble in isolated integrable quantum systems

Abstract

The generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE), which involves multiple conserved quantities other than the Hamiltonian, has served as the statistical-mechanical description of the long-time behavior for several isolated integrable quantum systems. We argue that the GGE may involve a noncommutative set of conserved quantities in view of the maximum entropy principle and show that the GGE thus generalized (noncommutative GGE, NCGGE) gives a more qualitatively accurate description of the long-time behaviors than that of the conventional GGE. Providing a clear understanding of why the (NC)GGE well describes the long-time behaviors, we construct, for noninteracting models, the exact NCGGE that describes the long-time behaviors without an error even at finite system size. It is noteworthy that the NCGGE involves nonlocal conserved quantities, which can be necessary for describing long-time behaviors of local observables. We also give some extensions of the NCGGE and demonstrate how accurately they describe the long-time behaviors of few-body observables.