Global large time dynamics and the generalized Gibbs ensemble

Abstract: We study the large time dynamics of a macroscopically large quantum systems under a sudden quench. We show that, first of all, for a generic system in the thermodynamic limit the Gibbs distribution correctly captures the large time dynamics of its global observables. In contrast, for an integrable system, the generalized Gibbs ensemble captures its global large time dynamics only if the system can be thought of as a number of noninteracting uncorrelated fermionic degrees of freedom. The conditions for the generalized Gibbs ensemble to capture the large time dynamics of local quantities are likely to be far less restrictive, but this question is not systematically addressed here.