Sunburst quantum Ising model under interaction quench: Entanglement and role of initial state coherence

Abstract

We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of an isolated bipartite quantum system, the sunburst quantum Ising model, under interaction quench. The prequench limit of this model is two noninteracting integrable systems, namely a transverse Ising chain and finite number of isolated qubits. As a function of interaction strength, the spectral fluctuation property goes from Poisson to Wigner-Dyson statistics. We chose entanglement entropy as a probe to study the approach to thermalization or lack of it in postquench dynamics. In the near-integrable limit, as expected, the linear entropy displays oscillatory behavior, while in the chaotic limit it saturates. Along with the chaotic nature of the time evolution generator, we show the importance of the role played by the coherence of the initial state in deciding the nature of thermalization. We further show that these findings are general by replacing the Ising ring with a disordered $XXZ$ model with disorder strength putting it in the many-body localized phase.