Guillaume Roux 1
Physical Review A: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics 82 (2010) 037602
In his Comment [see preceding Comment, Phys. Rev. A 82, 037601 (2010)] on the paper by Roux [Phys. Rev. A 79, 021608(R) (2009)], Rigol argued that the energy distribution after a quench is not related to standard statistical ensembles and cannot explain thermalization. The latter is proposed to stem from what he calls the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis and which boils down to the fact that simple observables are expected to be smooth functions of the energy. In this Reply, we show that there is no contradiction or confusion between the observations and discussions of Roux and the expected thermalization scenario discussed by Rigol. In addition, we emphasize a few other important aspects, in particular the definition of temperature and the equivalence of ensemble, which are much more difficult to show numerically even though we believe they are essential to the discussion of thermalization. These remarks could be of interest to people interested in the interpretation of the data obtained on finite-size systems.
- 1. Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques (LPTMS),
CNRS : UMR8626 – Université Paris XI – Paris Sud