Relaxation and thermalization of isolated many-body quantum systems. (7th October 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Torres-Herrera, E J; Kollmar, Davida; Santos, Lea F
• Is Part Of: Physica scripta. Volume T165(2015:Oct.)
• Publication Date: 2015-10-07
• Subjects: many-body quantum systems -- isolated systems -- quench dynamics -- thermalization; Physics -- Periodicals; 530.05
• DOI: 10.1088/0031-8949/2015/T165/014018
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0031-8949

Abstract

Abstract: We provide an overview of our numerical and analytical studies of isolated interacting quantum systems that are abruptly quenched out of equilibrium instantaneously. We describe the relaxation process to a new equilibrium and obtain lower bounds for the relaxation time of full random matrices and realistic systems with two-body interactions. We show that the size of the time fluctuations after relaxation decays exponentially with system size for systems without too many degeneracies. We also discuss the conditions for thermalization and demonstrate that it can happen after local and global quenches in space. The analyses are developed for systems, initial states, and few-body observables accessible to experiments with optical lattices.