Local quenches with global effects in interacting quantum systems

E. J. Torres-Herrera, Lea F. Santos

Published 2014-02-27, updated 2014-09-04Version 2

We study one-dimensional lattices of interacting spins-1/2 and show that the effects of quenching the amplitude of a local magnetic field applied to a single site of the lattice can be comparable to the effects of a global perturbation applied instantaneously to the entire system. Both quenches take the system to the chaotic domain, the energy distribution of the initial states approaches a Breit-Wigner shape, the fidelity (Loschmidt echo) decays exponentially, and thermalization becomes viable.