Typical thermalization of low-entanglement states

Proving thermalization from the unitary evolution of a closed quantum system is one of the oldest questions that is still nowadays only partially resolved. Several efforts have led to various formulations of what is called the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. The latter, however, assume initial states which are highly concentrated around a specific energy window and, as such, cannot account for a large class of states that are of paramount importance and that are operationally accessible in natural physical settings, including many experimental schemes for testing thermalization and for quantum simulation: low-entanglement states. In this work, we prove thermalization of these states under precise conditions that have operational significance. More specifically, we define a random energy smoothing - motivated by arguments of unavoidable finite resolution - on local Hamiltonians that lead to local thermalization when the initial state has low entanglement. Finally we show that such transformation affects neither the Gibbs state locally nor, under a mild condition, the short time dynamics.