Typical Macroscopic Long-Time Behavior for Random Hamiltonians

Abstract

We consider a closed macroscopic quantum system in a pure state $\psi_t$ evolving unitarily and take for granted that different macro states correspond to mutually orthogonal subspaces $\mathcal{H}_\nu$ (macro spaces) of Hilbert space, each of which has large dimension. We extend previous work on the question what the evolution of $\psi_t$ looks like macroscopically, specifically on how much of $\psi_t$ lies in each $\mathcal{H}_\nu$. Previous bounds concerned the \emph{absolute} error for typical $\psi_0$ and/or $t$ and are valid for arbitrary Hamiltonians $H$; now, we provide bounds on the \emph{relative} error, which means much tighter bounds, with probability close to 1 by modeling $H$ as a random matrix, more precisely as a random band matrix (i.e., where only entries near the main diagonal are significantly nonzero) in a basis aligned with the macro spaces. We exploit particularly that the eigenvectors of $H$ are delocalized in this basis. Our main mathematical results confirm the two phenomena of generalized normal typicality (a type of long-time behavior) and dynamical typicality (a type of similarity within the ensemble of $\psi_0$ from an initial macro space). They are based on an extension we prove of a no-gaps delocalization result for random matrices by Rudelson and Vershynin.