Statistical distribution of the local purity in a large quantum system

The local purity of large many-body quantum systems can be studied by following a statistical mechanical approach based on a random matrix model. Restricting the analysis to the case of global pure states, this method proved to be successful, and a full characterization of the statistical properties of the local purity was obtained by computing the partition function of the problem. Here we generalize these techniques to the case of global mixed states. In this context, by uniformly sampling the phase space of states with assigned global mixedness, we determine the exact expression of the first two moments of the local purity and a general expression for the moments of higher order. This generalizes previous results obtained for globally pure configurations. Furthermore, through the introduction of a partition function for a suitable canonical ensemble, we compute the approximate expression of the first moment of the marginal purity in the high-temperature regime. In the process, we establish a formal connection with the theory of quantum twirling maps that provides an alternative, possibly fruitful, way of performing the calculation.