Related papers: Macroscopic and Microscopic Thermal Equilibrium
Non-equilibrium states of quantum systems in contact with thermal baths help telling environments with different temperatures or different statistics apart. We extend these studies to a more generic problem that consists in discriminating…
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…
Descriptions of molecular systems usually refer to two distinct theoretical frameworks. On the one hand the quantum pure state, i.e. the wavefunction, of an isolated system which is determined to calculate molecular properties and to…
We investigate how the temperature calculated from the microcanonical entropy compares with the canonical temperature for finite isolated quantum systems. We concentrate on systems with sizes that make them accessible to numerical exact…
We argue that a very large class of quantum pure states of isolated macroscopic bodies have sharply peaked energy distributions, with their width relative to the average scaling between $\sim N^{-1}$ and $\sim N^{-1/2}$, with $N \gg 1$, the…
One of the fundamental problems of quantum statistical physics is how an ideally isolated quantum system can ever reach thermal equilibrium behavior despite the unitary time evolution of quantum-mechanical systems. Here, we study, via…
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…
Two identical finite quantum systems prepared initially at different temperatures, isolated from the environment, and subsequently brought into contact are demonstrated to relax towards Gibbs-like quasi-equilibrium states with a common…
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…
Small thermodynamic systems exhibit peculiar behavior different from that observed in long-scale systems. Non-equilibrium processes taking place in those systems are strongly influenced by the presence of fluctuations which can be large.…
The physical quantity "temperature" is a cornerstone of thermodynamics and statistical physics. But it is necessary to mention that very frequently the scientists forget about the conditions to be satisfied in order to introduce…
Traditionally, it is understood that fluctuations in the equilibrium distribution are not evident in thermodynamic systems of large $N$ (the number of particles in the system) \cite{Huang1}. In this paper we examine the validity of this…
We study the internal dynamics of an elementary quantum system placed close to a body held at a temperature different from that of the surrounding radiation. We derive general expressions for lifetime and density matrix valid for bodies of…
Thermalization is the process through which a physical system evolves toward a state of thermal equilibrium. Determining whether or not a physical system will thermalize from an initial state has been a key question in condensed matter…
Under the influence of external environments, quantum systems can undergo various different processes, including decoherence and equilibration. We observe that macroscopic objects are both objective and thermal, thus leading to the…
It is argued that a typical many body energy eigenstate has a well defined thermodynamic entropy and that individual eigenstates possess thermodynamic characteristics analogous to those of generic isolated systems. We examine large systems…
In the present note, we discuss a simple example of a macroscopic quantum many-body system in which the approach to thermal equilibrium from an arbitrary initial state in the microcanonical energy shell is proved without relying on any…
In the study of thermalization in finite isolated quantum systems, an inescapable issue is the definition of temperature. We examine and compare different possible ways of assigning temperatures to energies or equivalently to eigenstates in…
Temperature is a deceptively simple concept that still raises deep questions at the forefront of quantum physics research. The observation of thermalisation in completely isolated quantum systems, such as cold-atom quantum simulators,…
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…