Related papers: Macroscopic and Microscopic Thermal Equilibrium
Macroscopic quantum superpositions are widely believed to be unobservable because large systems cannot be perfectly isolated from their environments. Here, we show that even under perfect isolation, intrinsic unitary dynamics with the…
In classical systems, we reexamine how macroscopic structures in equilibrium state connect with spatial con- straint on the systems: e.g., volume and density as the constraint for liquids in rigid box, and crystal lattice as the constraint…
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…
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 investigate steady states of macroscopic quantum systems under dissipation not obeying the detailed balance condition. We argue that the Gibbs state at an effective temperature gives a good description of the steady state provided that…
We study two small quantum systems coupled to the same reservoir which is in thermal equilibrium. By studying the particle density and the energy density in the two systems before and after they contact each other, we find that the two…
The thermal or equilibrium ensemble is one of the most ubiquitous states of matter. For models comprised of many locally interacting quantum particles, it describes a wide range of physical situations, relevant to condensed matter physics,…
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,…
The approach to thermal equilibrium, or thermalization, in isolated quantum systems is among the most fundamental problems in statistical physics. Recent theoretical studies have revealed that thermalization in isolated quantum systems has…
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…
Heat flow between a large ``bath'' and a smaller system brings them progressively closer to thermal equilibrium while increasing their entropy. Deviations from this trend are fluctuations involving a small fraction of a statistical ensemble…
A microscopic understanding of the thermodynamic entropy in quantum systems has been a mystery ever since the invention of quantum mechanics. In classical physics, this entropy is believed to be the logarithm of the volume of phase space…
We establish an analytical criterion for dynamical thermalization within harmonic systems, applicable to both classical and quantum models. Specifically, we prove that thermalization of various observables, such as particle energies in…
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…
Describing open quantum systems far from equilibrium is challenging, in particular when the environment is mesoscopic, when it develops nonequilibrium features during the evolution, or when the memory effects cannot be disregarded. Here, we…
For classical discrete systems under constant composition, a set of microscopic state dominantly contributing to thermodynamically equilibrium structure should depend on temperature and energy through Boltzmann factor, exp(-bE). Despite…
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis provides a framework for understanding thermalization in isolated quantum many-body systems by characterizing statistical properties of local observables in energy eigenstates. Here we demonstrate…
A key feature of non-equilibrium thermodynamics is the Markovian, deterministic relaxation of coarse observables such as, for example, the temperature difference between two macroscopic objects which evolves independently of almost all…
A model for the thermodynamics of a quantum heat bath is introduced. Under the assumption that the bath molecules have finitely many degrees of freedom and are weakly interacting, we present a general derivation of the equation of state of…
Under the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH), quantum-quenched systems equilibrate towards canonical, thermal ensembles. While at first glance the ETH might seem a very strong hypothesis, we show that it is indeed not only…