English

Eigenstate condensation in quantum systems with finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces

Quantum Physics 2026-01-28 v1 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks Statistical Mechanics Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

Random quantum states drawn from the Haar ensemble with a constraint on the energy expectation value Eav=ψHψE_{\mathrm{av}} = \langle \psi | H | \psi\rangle display \textit{eigenstate condensation}: for EavE_{\mathrm{av}} below a critical value EcE_c, they develop macroscopic overlap with the ground state. We study eigenstate condensation in systems with finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. These systems display three phases: a ground-state phase, in which energy-constrained random states have macroscopic overlap with the ground state; a high-temperature phase, in which they have exponentially small overlap with each energy eigenstate; and an anti-ground-state phase, in which they have macroscopic overlap with the most highly excited state. In local spin systems the ground-state and anti-ground-state phases approach the middle of the spectrum as 1/[system size]1/[\text{system size}], but -- because the condensation phase transitions have exponential, rather than polynomial, finite-size scaling -- the crossover becomes exponentially sharp in system size and the high-temperature phase is best understood as an extended phase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.18869,
  title  = {Eigenstate condensation in quantum systems with finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces},
  author = {Christopher David White and Michael Winer and Noam Bernstein},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.18869},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:21:03.068Z