English

Extremely quick thermalization in a macroscopic quantum system for a typical nonequilibrium subspace

Statistical Mechanics 2015-06-18 v1 Mathematical Physics math.MP Quantum Physics

Abstract

The fact that macroscopic systems approach thermal equilibrium may seem puzzling, for example, because it may seem to conflict with the time-reversibility of the microscopic dynamics. We here prove that in a macroscopic quantum system for a typical choice of "nonequilibrium subspace", any initial state indeed thermalizes, and in fact does so very quickly, on the order of the Boltzmann time τB:=h/(kBT)\tau_\mathrm{B}:=h/(k_\mathrm{B}T). Therefore what needs to be explained is, not that macroscopic systems approach equilibrium, but that they do so slowly.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1402.0324,
  title  = {Extremely quick thermalization in a macroscopic quantum system for a typical nonequilibrium subspace},
  author = {Sheldon Goldstein and Takashi Hara and Hal Tasaki},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.0324},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T02:59:43.273Z