In the research field of Many-body Localization (MBL), people are always talking about the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). ETH asserts that for a isolated quantum system, all many-body eigenstates of the Hamiltonian are thermal, which means all sub-systems can involve to thermalzation in the end. ETH is not always true and violation to it means MBL for an interacting quantum many-body system. Well, my puzzle is as follows:
For a isolated quantum system A and a space-specified sub-system B∈A. It is assumed the initial state of A is one of the eigenstates |ψ(t=0)⟩A of its Hamiltonian H. Of course it is a pure state. Note the the initial state |ψ(t=0)⟩B of B is not a pure state unless |ψ(t=0)⟩A is the direct product state of |ψ(t=0)⟩B and the state of A/B, which means there B is disentangled with the rest part A/B. Since B is chosen arbitrarily, mixed initial state of B is the most general case and its state cannot be described by a single state but a density matrix ρB(t=0).
Now let the system A evolve along time. There are two ways to check ρB at arbitrary time t.
1) I can partially trace ρA by ρB=trA/BρA. While ρA=|ψ|⟩A⟨ψ|A will not change because |ψ⟩A is the eigenstate and it will not evolve under the time evolution operator thus ρB will not change forever.
2) The mixed state ρB(t=0) evolves along time and it may thermalize to Gibbs density matrix ˜ρB=1Ze−βH where Z is its statistical partition function. This is indeed the statement of ETH.
What's wrong for the paradoxical results viewed from two different perspectives for the same thing?
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