On the distribution of the wave function for systems in thermal equilibrium (Q867728)

For a quantum system, a density matrix \(\rho\) that is not pure can arise, via averaging, from a distribution \(\mu\) of its wave function, a normalized vector belonging to its Hilbert space \(\mathcal{H}\). The authors construct, for a given density matrix \(\rho\), a natural measure on the unit sphere in \(\mathcal{H}\), denoted \(GAP(\rho)\), by using a suitable projection of the Gaussian measure on \(\mathcal{H}\) with covariance \(\rho\). One describes some natural properties of this measure and suggest that these properties uniquely characterize the measure. In particular, \(GAP(\rho_{\beta})\), with \(\rho_{\beta}=(1/Z)\exp(-\beta H)\) represents the canonical ensemble. Moreover, \(GAP(\rho_{\beta})\) is the typical distribution of the conditional wave function arising from a fixed microcanonical wave function of a system in contact with a heat bath.