Entropy is a fundamental concept in equilibrium statistical mechanics, yet its origin in the nonequilibrium dynamics of isolated quantum systems is not fully understood. A strong consensus is emerging around the idea that the stationary thermodynamic entropy is the von Neumann entanglement entropy of a large subsystem embedded in an infinite system. Also motivated by cold-atom experiments, here we consider the generalization to Rényi entropies. We develop a new technique to calculate the diagonal Rényi entropy in the quench action formalism. In the spirit of the replica treatment for the entanglement entropy, the diagonal Rényi entropies are generalized free energies evaluated over a thermodynamic macrostate which depends on the Rényi index and, in particular, is not the same state describing von Neumann entropy. The technical reason for this perhaps surprising result is that the evaluation of the moments of the diagonal density matrix shifts the saddle point of the quench action. An interesting consequence is that different Rényi entropies encode information about different regions of the spectrum of the postquench Hamiltonian. Our approach provides a very simple proof of the long-standing issue that, for integrable systems, the diagonal entropy is half of the thermodynamic one and it allows us to generalize this result to the case of arbitrary Rényi entropy.

• Received 16 June 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.115421