Related papers: Equilibration, thermalisation, and the emergence o…
The project concerns the interplay among quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, in isolated quantum systems. The underlying goal is to improve our understanding of the concept of thermal equilibrium in quantum systems.…
The concept of entropy is fundamental to thermalization, yet appears at odds with basic principles in quantum mechanics. Statistical mechanics relies on the maximization of entropy for a system at thermal equilibrium. However, an isolated…
Time dynamics of isolated many-body quantum systems has long been an elusive subject. Very recently, however, meaningful experimental studies of the problem have finally become possible, stimulating theoretical interest as well. Progress in…
Closed quantum many-body systems out of equilibrium pose several long-standing problems in physics. Recent years have seen a tremendous progress in approaching these questions, not least due to experiments with cold atoms and trapped ions…
Lack of knowledge about the detailed many-particle motion on the microscopic scale is a key issue in any theoretical description of a macroscopic experiment. For systems at or close to thermal equilibrium, statistical mechanics provides a…
We review the recent progress in the understanding of the relaxation of isolated near-integrable quantum many-body systems. Focusing on prethermalization and universal dynamics following a quench, we describe the experiments with ultracold…
The last decade has witnessed the remarkable progress in our understanding of thermalization in isolated quantum systems. Combining the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis with quantum measurement theory, we extend the framework of quantum…
We review various bounds concerning out-of-equilibrium dynamics in few-level and many-body quantum systems. We primarily focus on closed quantum systems but will also mention some related results for open quantum systems and classical…
We establish a link between unitary relaxation dynamics after a quench in closed many-body systems and the entanglement in the energy eigenbasis. We find that even if reduced states equilibrate, they can have memory on the initial…
We review the non-equilibrium dynamics of many-body quantum systems after a quantum quench with spatial inhomogeneities, either in the Hamiltonian or in the initial state. We focus on integrable and many-body localized systems that fail to…
Technological and scientific advances have given rise to an era in which coherent quantum-mechanical phenomena can be probed and experimentally-realised over unprecedented timescales in condensed matter physics. In turn, scientific interest…
We review some recent developments in the statistical mechanics of isolated quantum systems. We provide a brief introduction to quantum thermalization, paying particular attention to the `Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis' (ETH), and the…
Thermalization of an isolated quantum system has been a nontrivial problem since the early days of quantum mechanics. In generic isolated quantum systems, nonequilibrium dynamics is expected to result in thermalization, indicating the…
Explaining quantum many-body dynamics is a long-held goal of physics. A rigorous operator algebraic theory of dynamics in locally interacting systems in any dimension is provided here in terms of time-dependent equilibrium (Gibbs)…
Thermalizing quantum systems are conventionally described by statistical mechanics at equilibrium. However, not all systems fall into this category, with many body localization providing a generic mechanism for thermalization to fail in…
The intersection of thermodynamics, quantum theory and gravity has revealed many profound insights, all the while posing new puzzles. In this article, we discuss an extension of equilibrium statistical mechanics and thermodynamics…
The connection between the non-equilibrium dynamics of isolated quantum many-body systems and statistical mechanics is a fundamental open question. It is generally believed that the unitary quantum evolution of a sufficiently complex system…
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,…
To understand under which conditions thermodynamics emerges from the microscopic dynamics is the ultimate goal of statistical mechanics. Despite the fact that the theory is more than 100 years old, we are still discussing its foundations…
Thermalization (generalized thermalization) in nonintegrable (integrable) quantum systems requires two ingredients: equilibration and agreement with the predictions of the Gibbs (generalized Gibbs) ensemble. We prove that observables that…