Thermalization of interacting quasi-one-dimensional systems
Abstract
Many experimentally relevant systems are quasi-one-dimensional, consisting of nearly decoupled chains. In these systems, there is a natural separation of scales between the strong intra-chain interactions and the weak interchain coupling. When the intra-chain interactions are integrable, weak interchain couplings play a crucial part in thermalizing the system. Here, we develop a Boltzmann-equation formalism involving a collision integral that is asymptotically exact for any interacting integrable system, and apply it to develop a quantitative theory of relaxation in coupled Bose gases in the experimentally relevant Newton's cradle setup. We find that relaxation involves a broad spectrum of timescales. We provide evidence that the Markov process governing relaxation at late times is gapless; thus, the approach to equilibrium is generally non-exponential, even for spatially uniform perturbations.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2205.06492,
title = {Thermalization of interacting quasi-one-dimensional systems},
author = {Miłosz Panfil and Sarang Gopalakrishnan and Robert M. Konik},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.06492},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
v2: improved presentation, 6 pages + 15 pages of supplemental materials