CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

It is analytically shown that the asymptotic correlations in exactly solvable models following a quantum quench can behave essentially as thermal correlations provided the entanglement between two eigenmodes is sufficiently strong. We provide one example and one counter example of this observation. The example illustrates the fact that the thermal correlations arise from initial states where the entanglement between the eigenmodes stems from the existence of a large energy gap in the initial state. On the other hand, the counter-example shows that when the bi-partite entanglement of the eigenmodes stems from interactions that do not open a gap, the correlations at asymptotically long times are non-thermal. We also show that the thermal behavior concerns only the asymptotic correlation functions, as the difference with an actual thermal ensemble can be observed measuring the energy fluctuations of the system. The latter observation implies a breakdown of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem.