Eigenstate thermalization

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 13 Apr 2026] Eigenstate thermalization Rohit Patil, Marcos Rigol We provide a pedagogical introduction to eigenstate thermalization. This phenomenon, which occurs in generic systems, allows one to understand why thermalization takes place in isolated quantum systems under unitary dynamics. We motivate eigenstate thermalization using random matrix theory and discuss recent complementary results for the volume-law entanglement entropy of Haar-random states. We discuss numerical results that highlight the corresponding behaviors in quantum many-body systems. Comments: 23 pages, 9 figures; Chapter for the Quantum Chaos volume in 'Comprehensive Quantum Mechanics', to be published by Elsevier (Main editor: R.B. Mann; volume editors: S. Gnutzmann and K. {Ż}yczkowski) Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) Cite as: arXiv:2604.11872 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.11872v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.11872 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Rohit Patil [view email] [v1] Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:00:00 UTC (1,291 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.stat-mech References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)