Convergence of eigenstate expectation values with system size

Understanding the asymptotic behavior of physical quantities in the thermodynamic limit is a fundamental problem in statistical mechanics. In this paper, we study how fast the eigenstate expectation values of a local operator converge to a smooth function of energy density as the system size diverges. In translation-invariant quantum lattice systems in any spatial dimension, we prove that for all but a measure zero set of local operators, the deviations of finite-size eigenstate expectation values from the aforementioned smooth function are lower bounded by $1/\mathit{O}(N)$, where $N$ is the system size. The lower bound holds regardless of the integrability or chaoticity of the model, and is saturated in systems satisfying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis.

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Published 30 June 2023