From many-body oscillations to thermalization in an isolated spinor gas
Abstract
The dynamics of a many-body system can take many forms, from a purely reversible evolution to fast thermalization. Here we show experimentally and numerically that an assembly of spin 1 atoms all in the same spatial mode allows one to explore this wide variety of behaviors. When the system can be described by a Bogoliubov analysis, the relevant energy spectrum is linear and leads to undamped oscillations of many-body observables. Outside this regime, the non-linearity of the spectrum leads to irreversibity, characterized by a universal behavior. When the integrability of the Hamiltonian is broken, a chaotic dynamics emerges and leads to thermalization, in agreement with the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis paradigm.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2010.13832,
title = {From many-body oscillations to thermalization in an isolated spinor gas},
author = {Bertrand Evrard and An Qu and Jean Dalibard and Fabrice Gerbier},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.13832},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
Supplementary material available as ancillary file