The hidden structure of chaotic many-body quantum systems

Invited Talk

Quantum statistical mechanics dictates that interacting many-body systems chaotically thermalize and forget their past. While this narrative accurately describes simple observables, it can break when we examine the full complexity of the wavefunction amplitudes, a feat now made possible by the unprecedented control of modern quantum computers and simulators. In this talk, I will show that even within the regime of many-body chaos, quantum states can harbor a persistent, hidden structure. By analyzing a broad class of interacting spin models, I will demonstrate that highly entangled, thermal eigenstates often maintain an anomalously large overlap with specific product states – remembrances of classical trajectories that survive in the Hilbert space. This structure causes the system to deviate from universal statistical predictions and resist the complete loss of information, providing a new perspective on many-body quantum chaos and highlighting the fundamental limits of thermalization.

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