Conserved quantities enable the quantum Mpemba effect in weakly open systems

Quantum Physics arXiv:2511.16739 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 20 Nov 2025] Title:Conserved quantities enable the quantum Mpemba effect in weakly open systems Authors:Iris Ulčakar, Rustem Sharipov, Gianluca Lagnese, Zala Lenarčič View a PDF of the paper titled Conserved quantities enable the quantum Mpemba effect in weakly open systems, by Iris Ul\v{c}akar and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Observation of the quantum Mpemba effect has spurred much interest in its enabling conditions and its relation to the classical counterpart. Here, we consider weakly open many-body quantum systems initialized in different thermal states and examine when the initially farther state relaxes to the (non-equilibrium) steady state faster. We claim that the number of conserved quantities in the unitary part plays a crucial role: the Mpemba effect is possible only when the Hamiltonian commutes with other extensive operators or is integrable. The reason lies in the dynamical evolution happening in spaces of different dimensions. When energy is the only approximately conserved quantity, dissipation pushes the dynamics within a single-parameter manifold of different thermal states. In contrast, for Hamiltonians with several conserved quantities, the dynamics drift in the multi-dimensional space of generalized Gibbs ensembles, whose distance to the steady state is less trivial. We provide numerical results for large system sizes using tensor networks and free-fermion techniques, thereby supporting our claim. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) Cite as: arXiv:2511.16739 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2511.16739v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.16739 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Iris Ulčakar [view email] [v1] Thu, 20 Nov 2025 19:00:04 UTC (1,125 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Conserved quantities enable the quantum Mpemba effect in weakly open systems, by Iris Ul\v{c}akar and 2 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2025-11 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.stat-mech References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: 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 Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)