Thermal equilibration between two quantum systems
Statistical Mechanics
2011-01-10 v4 Quantum Gases
Quantum Physics
Abstract
Two identical finite quantum systems prepared initially at different temperatures, isolated from the environment, and subsequently brought into contact are demonstrated to relax towards Gibbs-like quasi-equilibrium states with a common temperature and small fluctuations around the time-averaged expectation values of generic observables. The temporal thermalization process proceeds via a chain of intermediate Gibbs-like states. We specify the conditions under which this scenario occurs and corroborate the quantum equilibration with two different models.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1004.2232,
title = {Thermal equilibration between two quantum systems},
author = {Alexey V. Ponomarev and Sergey Denisov and Peter Hänggi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1004.2232},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
10 pages, 9 figures, including supplementary material