English

Generalized Wigner-von Neumann entropy and its typicality

Quantum Physics 2019-05-22 v2 Quantum Gases Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We propose a generalization of the quantum entropy introduced by Wigner and von Neumann in 1929 [Zeitschrift f\"ur Physik 57, 30 (1929)]. Our generalization is applicable to both quantum pure states and mixed states. When the dimension NN of the Hilbert space is large, as a result of typicality, this generalized Wigner-von Neumann (GWvN) entropy becomes independent of choices of basis and is asymptotically equal to lnN\ln N. The dynamic evolution of our entropy is also typical, reminiscent of quantum H theorem proved by von Neumann. For the microcanonical ensemble, the GWvN entropy is equivalent to the Boltzmann entropy; for a subsystem in a mixed state, the GWvN entropy is equivalent to the familiar von Neumann entropy, which is zero for pure states. The GWvN entropy can be used to derive the Gibbs ensemble.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.10020,
  title  = {Generalized Wigner-von Neumann entropy and its typicality},
  author = {Zhigang Hu and Zhenduo Wang and Biao Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.10020},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

8 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-23T06:55:36.067Z