Work

Relaxation in a Completely Integrable Many-Body Quantum System: An Ab Initio Study of the Dynamics of the Highly Excited States of 1D Lattice Hard-Core Bosons

Year: 2007

Type: article

Abstract: In this Letter we pose the question of whether a many-body quantum system with a full set of conserved quantities can relax to an equilibrium state, and, if it can, what the properties of such a state are. We confirm the relaxation hypothesis through an ab initio numerical investigation of the dynamics of hard-core bosons on a one-dimensional lattice. Further, a natural extension of the Gibbs ensemble to integrable systems results in a theory that is able to predict the mean values of physical observables after relaxation. Finally, we show that our generalized equilibrium carries more memory of the initial conditions than the usual thermodynamic one. This effect may have many experimental consequences, some of which have already been observed in the recent experiment on the nonequilibrium dynamics of one-dimensional hard-core bosons in a harmonic potential [T. Kinoshita et al., Nature (London) 440, 900 (2006)10.1038/nature04693].

Source: Physical Review Letters

DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.98.050405

Authors: Marcos Rigol, Vanja Dunjko, Vladimir Yurovsky, Maxim Olshanii

Institutions: University of California, Davis, University of Southern California, Harvard University, Tel Aviv University

Language: English

Topic: Quantum many-body systems

Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green