Related papers: Thermalization in closed quantum systems: semiclas…
We study thermalization in open quantum systems using the Lindblad formalism. A method that both thermalizes and couples to Lindblad operators only at edges of the system is introduced. Our method leads to a Gibbs state of the system,…
Chaos and ergodicity are the cornerstones of statistical physics and thermodynamics. While classically even small systems like a particle in a two-dimensional cavity, can exhibit chaotic behavior and thereby relax to a microcanonical…
The problems with an emergent approach to quantum statistical mechanics are discussed and shown to follow from some of the same sources as those of quantum measurement. A wavefunction of an N atom solid is described in the ground and…
Classical arguments for thermalization of isolated systems do not apply in a straightforward way to the quantum case. Recently, there has been interest in diagnostics of quantum chaos in many- body systems. In the classical case, chaos is a…
Integrability in one dimension prevents quantum thermalization and gives rise to rich many-body phenomena described by generalized hydrodynamics, which have been extensively studied over the past two decades using cold atoms in optically…
We consider blocks of quantum spins in a chain at thermal equilibrium, focusing on their properties from a thermodynamical perspective. Whereas in classical systems the temperature behaves as an intensive magnitude, a deviation from this…
If we prepare an isolated, interacting quantum system in an eigenstate and perturb a local observable at an initial time, its expectation value will relax towards a thermal expectation value, even though the time evolution of the system is…
We study the relaxation of a quantum system towards the thermal equilibrium using tools developed within the context of quantum information theory. We consider a model in which the system is a qubit, and reaches equilibrium after several…
Isolated quantum many-body systems with integrable dynamics generically do not thermalize when taken far from equilibrium. As one perturbs such systems away from the integrable point, thermalization sets in, but the nature of the crossover…
Understanding relaxation processes is an important unsolved problem in many areas of physics. A key challenge in studying such non-equilibrium dynamics is the scarcity of experimental tools for characterizing their complex transient states.…
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis provides to date the most successful description of thermalization in isolated quantum systems by conjecturing statistical properties of matrix elements of typical operators in the (quasi-)energy…
Eigenstate thermalization is widely accepted as the mechanism behind thermalization in generic isolated quantum systems. Using the example of a single magnetic defect embedded in the integrable spin-1/2 $XXZ$ chain, we show that locally…
Nonequilibrium dynamics of a nonintegrable system without the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis is studied. It is shown that, in the thermodynamic limit, this model thermalizes after an arbitrary quantum quench at finite temperature,…
Understanding how isolated quantum systems thermalize has recently gathered renewed interest almost 100 years after the first work by von Neumann, thanks to the experimental realizations of such systems. Experimental and numerical pieces of…
In the classical world, temperature is a measure of how hot or cold a physical object is. We never find a physical system which can be both hot and cold at the same time. Here, we show that for a quantum system, it is possible to have…
We examine in detail the mechanisms behind thermalization and Bose-Einstein condensation of a gas of photons in a dye-filled microcavity. We derive a microscopic quantum model, based on that of a standard laser, and show how this model can…
We present numerical results demonstrating the possibility of thermalization of single-particle observables in a one-dimensional integrable system (a quasicondensate of ultra-cold, weakly-interacting bosonic atoms being studied as a…
A quantum dynamical model of two interacting spins, with chaotic and regular components, is investigated using a finite two-particles symmetrized basis. Chaotic eigenstates give rise to an equilibrium occupation number distribution in close…
In an isolated quantum many-body system undergoing unitary evolution, we study the thermalization of a subsystem, treating the rest of the system as a bath. In this setting, the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) was proposed to…
We highlight a dynamical anomaly in which the rate of relaxation towards thermal equilibrium in a bi-partite quantum system violates the standard linear-response (Kubo) formulation, even when the underlying dynamics is highly chaotic. This…