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Thermalization in the mixed-field Ising model: An occupation number perspective

The occupation number is a key observable for diagnosing thermalization, as it connects directly to standard statistical laws such as Fermi--Dirac, Bose--Einstein, and Boltzmann distributions. In the context of spin systems, it represents the population of the sublevels of the magnetization in the $z$-direction. We use this quantity to probe the onset of thermalization in the isolated quantum and classical one-dimensional spin-1 Ising model with transverse and longitudinal fields. Thermalization is achieved when the long-time average of the occupation number converges to the microcanonical prediction as the chain length $L$ increases, consistent with the emergence of ergodicity. However, the finite-size scaling analysis in the quantum model is challenged by the exponential growth of the Hilbert space with $L$. To overcome this limitation, we turn to the corresponding classical model, which enables access to much larger system sizes. By tracking the dynamics of individual spins on their three-dimensional Bloch spheres and employing tools from random matrix theory, we establish a quantitative criterion for classical ergodicity in interacting spin systems. We find that deviations from classical ergodicity decay algebraically with system size. This power-law scaling then provides a quantitative bound on the approach to thermal equilibrium in the quantum model.