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arXiv:2108.00685 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Near-frozen nonequilibrium state at high energy in an integrable system

Stefan G. Fischer, Yigal Meir, Yuval Gefen, Bernd Rosenow

Published Aug 24, 2023• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Ergodic many-body systems are expected to reach thermal equilibrium. Here, we demonstrate that, surprisingly, high-energy electrons, which are injected into a quantum Hall edge mode with finite-range interactions, stabilize at a far-from-thermalized state over a long timescale. To detect this nonequilibrium state, one positions an energy-resolved detector downstream of the injection point. So far, nonequilibrium distributions in integrable systems were either found not to display relaxation at all, or generically relax to near-thermal asymptotic states. In stark contrast, the here-obtained many-body state comprises fast-decaying transient components, followed by a nearly frozen distribution with a peak near the injection energy.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.108.l081121

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Ergodic many-body systems are expected to reach thermal equilibrium. Here, we demonstrate that, surprisingly, high-energy electrons, which are injected into a quantum Hall edge mode with finite-range interactions, stabilize at a far-from-thermalized state over a long timescale. To detect this nonequilibrium state, one positions an energy-resolved detector downstream of the injection point. So far, nonequilibrium distributions in integrable systems were either found not to display relaxation at all, or generically relax to near-thermal asymptotic states. In stark contrast, the here-obtained many-body state comprises fast-decaying transient components, followed by a nearly frozen distribution with a peak near the injection energy.
Ergodic many-body systems are expected to reach quasi-thermal equilibrium. Here we demonstrate that, surprisingly, high-energy electrons, which are injected into an interacting one-dimensional quantum Hall edge mode, stabilize at a far-from-thermalized state over a long-time scale. To detect this non-equilibrium state, one positions an energy-resolved detector downstream of the point of injection. Previous works have shown that electron distributions, which undergo short-ranged interactions, generically relax to near-thermal asymptotic states. Here, we consider screened interactions of finite range. The thus-obtained many-body state comprises fast-decaying transient components, followed by a nearly frozen distribution with a peak near the injection energy.
We study equilibration of quantum Hall edge states at integer filling factors, motivated by experiments involving point contacts at finite bias. Idealizing the experimental situation and extending the notion of a quantum quench, we consider time evolution from an initial nonequilibrium state in a translationally invariant system. We show that electron interactions bring the system into a steady state at long times. Strikingly, this state is not a thermal one: Its properties depend on the full functional form of the initial electron distribution and not simply on the initial energy density. Further, we demonstrate that measurements of the tunneling density of states at long times can yield either an overestimate or an underestimate of the energy density, depending on details of the analysis, and discuss this finding in connection with an apparent energy loss observed experimentally. More specifically, we treat several separate cases: for filling factor $\ensuremath{\nu}=1$ we discuss relaxation due to finite-range or Coulomb interactions between electrons in the same channel, and for filling factor $\ensuremath{\nu}=2$ we examine relaxation due to contact interactions between electrons in different channels. In both instances we calculate analytically the long-time asymptotics of the single-particle correlation function. These results are supported by an exact solution at arbitrary time for the problem of relaxation at $\ensuremath{\nu}=2$ from an initial state in which the two channels have electron distributions that are both thermal but with unequal temperatures, for which we also examine the tunneling density of states.
We theoretically study a Luttinger liquid (LL) driven out of equilibrium by injection of high-energy electrons. The electrons are injected into the LL locally at a fixed energy and their spectral properties are detected at another spatial point some distance away by evaluating the average tunneling current from the LL into a resonant level with tunable energy. For energies slightly below the injection energy, the dependence of the detected current on the difference between injection, and detection energies is described by a power law whose exponent depends continuously on the Luttinger parameter. In contrast, for tunneling into a chiral LL edge of a fractional quantum-Hall state from the Laughlin sequence, we find that the detected current grows linearly with energy difference, despite a decreasing density of states.
A Tomonaga-Luttinger (TL) liquid is known as an integrable system, in which a nonequilibrium many-body state survives without relaxing to a thermalized state. This intriguing characteristic is tested experimentally in copropagating quantum Hall edge channels at bulk filling factor ν=2. The unidirectional transport allows us to investigate the time evolution by measuring the spatial evolution of the electronic states. The initial state is prepared with a biased quantum point contact, and its spatial evolution is measured with a quantum-dot energy spectrometer. We find strong evidence for a nonthermal metastable state in agreement with the TL theory before the system relaxes to thermal equilibrium with coupling to the environment.
Whether and how a system approaches equilibrium is a central issue in nonequilibrium statistical physics, underpinning our understanding of both thermalization and heat transport. Bogoliubov's three-stage (initial, kinetic, and hydrodynamic) evolution hypothesis provides a qualitative framework, but quantitative advances have mostly been restricted to near-integrable systems such as dilute gases. In this work, we investigate the relaxation dynamics of a one-dimensional diatomic hard-point gas and present a phase diagram that comprehensively characterizes relaxation behavior across the full parameter space, from near-integrable to far-from-integrable regimes. We first analyze thermalization (local energy relaxation in nonequilibrium states) and identify three universal dynamical regimes: (1) In the near-integrable regime, kinetic processes dominate (initial + kinetic phase), local energy relaxation decays exponentially, and the thermalization time τ scales with perturbation strength δ as τ ∝ δ − 2 . (2) In the far-from-integrable regime, hydrodynamic effects dominate (initial + hydrodynamic phase), local energy relaxation follows power-law decay, and thermalization time scales linearly with system size N . (3) In the intermediate regime, Bogoliubov phase emerges, marked by the transition from kinetic to hydrodynamic relaxation. The phase diagram further reveals that hydrodynamic behavior can emerge even in small systems when the system is sufficiently far from the integrable regime, challenging the conventional view that such effects are only significant in large systems. In the thermodynamic limit, the system's relaxation behavior depends on the order in which the limits ( N → ∞ or δ → 0 ) are taken. We then turn to heat transport (decay of heat-current fluctuations in equilibrium) and demonstrate that its behavior is fully consistent with the thermalization process, leading to the first unified theoretical description of thermalization and heat transport. Our results establish a comprehensive view of relaxation in classical many-body systems and suggest a route for studying similar dynamics in quantum systems, highlighting universal scaling laws and the interplay of kinetic and hydrodynamic processes across integrability regimes.
A Tomonaga-Luttinger (TL) liquid is known as an integrable system, in which a non-equilibrium many-body state survives without relaxing to a thermalized state. This intriguing characteristic is tested experimentally in copropagating quantum Hall edge channels at bulk filling factor nu = 2. The unidirectional transport allows us to investigate the time evolution by measuring the spatial evolution of the electronic states. The initial state is prepared with a biased quantum point contact, and its spatial evolution is measured with a quantum-dot energy spectrometer. We find strong evidences for a non-thermal metastable state in agreement with the TL theory before the system relaxes to thermal equilibrium with coupling to the environment.