Related papers: Thermal equilibration between two quantum systems
The circumstances under which a system reaches thermal equilibrium, and how to derive this from basic dynamical laws, has been a major question from the very beginning of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Despite considerable…
When two initially thermal many-body systems start interacting strongly, their transient states quickly become non-Gibbsian, even if the systems eventually equilibrate. To see beyond this apparent lack of structure during the transient…
Based on the view that thermal equilibrium should be characterized through macroscopic observations, we develop a general theory about typicality of thermal equilibrium and the approach to thermal equilibrium in macroscopic quantum systems.…
This chapter discusses the conditions and timescales under which isolated many-body quantum systems, initially far from equilibrium, ultimately reach thermal equilibrium. We also examine quantities that, during the relaxation process,…
Equilibrium properties of many-body systems with a large number of degrees of freedom are generally expected to be described by statistical mechanics. Such expectations are closely tied to the observation of thermalization, as manifested…
Thermalization of isolated quantum systems has been studied intensively in recent years and significant progresses have been achieved. Here, we study thermalization of small quantum systems that interact with large chaotic environments…
After a sudden disruption, weakly interacting quantum systems first relax to a prethermalized state that can be described by perturbation theory and a generalized Gibbs ensemble. Using these properties of the prethermalized state we…
A well-isolated system often shows relaxation to a quasi-stationary state before reaching thermal equilibrium. Such a prethermalization has attracted considerable interest recently in association with closely related fundamental problems of…
For open quantum systems coupled to a thermal bath at inverse temperature $\beta$, it is well known that under the Born-, Markov-, and secular approximations the system density matrix will approach the thermal Gibbs state with the bath…
In this work, we investigate the heat exchange between two quantum systems whose initial equilibrium states are described by the generalized Gibbs ensemble. First, we generalize the fluctuation relations for heat exchange discovered by…
A quasi-static process is realized in a purely quantum-mechanical model which is described by oscillator (or particle) systems having relative-phase interactions. Time development of a mixture of two oscillator (or particle) systems which…
We demonstrate the approach towards a Gibbs-like equilibrium state, with a common temperature and a chemical potential, of two finite metallic grains, prepared with a different number of noninteracting electrons, connected by a weak link…
This review is devoted to the problem of thermalization in a small isolated conglomerate of interacting constituents. A variety of physically important systems of intensive current interest belong to this category: complex atoms, molecules…
It has previously been suggested that small subsystems of closed quantum systems thermalize under some assumptions; however, this has been rigorously shown so far only for systems with very weak interaction between subsystems. In this work,…
Quantum superposition of energy eigenstates can appear autonomously in a single quantum two-level system coupled to a low-temperature thermal bath, if such coupling has a proper composite nature. We propose here a principally different and…
Prethermalization of the equation of state and the kinetic temperature to their equilibrium values occurs on time scales dramatically shorter than the thermal equilibration time. This is a crucial ingredient for the understanding of…
Understanding how macroscopic systems exhibit irreversible thermal behavior has been a long-standing challenge, first brought to prominence by Boltzmann. Recent advances have established rigorous conditions for isolated quantum systems to…
We consider two quantum Ising chains initially prepared at thermal equilibrium but with different temperatures and coupled at a given time through one of their end points. In the long-time limit the system reaches a non-equilibrium steady…
Deriving conditions under which a macroscopic system thermalizes directly from the underlying quantum many-body dynamics of its microscopic constituents is a long-standing challenge in theoretical physics. The well-known eigenstate…
The influence of the environment in the thermal equilibrium properties of a bipartite continuous variable quantum system is studied. The problem is treated within a system-plus-reservoir approach. The considered model reproduces the…