We consider a system of classical hard rods or billiard balls in one dimension, initially prepared in a Bragg-pulse state at a given temperature and subjected to external periodic fields. We show that at late times the system always thermalises in the thermodynamic limit via a 3-stages process characterised by: an early phase where the dynamics is well described by Euler hydrodynamics, a subsequent where a (weak) turbulent phase is observed and where hydrodynamic gradient expansion can be broken, and a final one where the gas thermalises according to a viscous hydrodynamics. As the hard rod gas shares the same large-scale hydrodynamics as other quantum and classical integrable systems, we expect these features to universally characterise all many-body integrable systems in generic external potentials.
We consider a system of classical hard rods or billiard balls in one dimension, initially prepared in a Bragg-pulse state at a given temperature and subjected to external periodic fields. We show that at late times the system always thermalises in the thermodynamic limit via a 3-stages process characterised by: an early phase where the dynamics is well described by Euler hydrodynamics, a subsequent where a (weak) turbulent phase is observed and where hydrodynamic gradient expansion can be broken, and a final one where the gas thermalises according to a viscous hydrodynamics. As the hard rod gas shares the same large-scale hydrodynamics as other quantum and classical integrable systems, we expect these features to universally characterise all many-body integrable systems in generic external potentials.
We consider a system of classical hard rods or billiard balls in one dimension, initially prepared in a Bragg-pulse state at a given temperature and subjected to external periodic fields. We show that at late times the system thermalizes in the thermodynamic limit via a three-stages process characterized by: an early phase where the dynamics is well described by Euler hydrodynamics, a subsequent phase where a (weak) turbulent phase is observed and where hydrodynamic gradient expansion can be broken, and a final one where the gas thermalizes according to viscous hydrodynamics. As the hard rod gas shares the same large-scale hydrodynamics as other quantum and classical integrable systems, we expect these features to universally characterize all many-body integrable systems in generic external potentials. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Abstract We consider the relaxation of an initial non-equilibrium state in a one-dimensional fluid of hard rods. Since it is an interacting integrable system, we expect it to reach the Generalized Gibbs Ensemble (GGE) at long times for generic initial conditions. Here we show that there exist initial conditions for which the system does not reach GGE even at very long times and in the thermodynamic limit. In particular, we consider an initial condition of uniformly distributed hard-rods in a box with the left half having particles with a singular velocity distribution (all moving with unit velocity) and the right half particles in thermal equilibrium. We find that the density profile for the singular component does not spread to the full extent of the box and keeps moving with a fixed effective speed at long times. We show that such density profiles can be well described by the solution of the Euler equations almost everywhere except at the location of the shocks, where we observe slight discrepancies due to dissipation arising from the initial fluctuations of the thermal background. To demonstrate this effect of dissipation analytically, we consider a second initial condition with a single particle at the origin with unit velocity in a thermal background. We find that the probability distribution of the position of the unit velocity quasi-particle has diffusive spreading which can be understood from the solution of the Navier–Stokes (NS) equation of the hard rods. Finally, we consider an initial condition with a spread in velocity distribution for which we show convergence to GGE. Our conclusions are based on molecular dynamics simulations supported by analytical arguments.
We study a one-dimensional gas of hard rods trapped in a harmonic potential, which breaks integrability of the hard-rod interaction in a nonuniform way. We explore the consequences of such broken integrability for the dynamics of a large number of particles and find three distinct regimes: initial, chaotic, and stationary. The initial regime is captured by an evolution equation for the phase-space distribution function. For any finite number of particles, this hydrodynamics breaks down and the dynamics becomes chaotic after a characteristic timescale determined by the interparticle distance and scattering length. The system fails to thermalize over the timescale studied (10^{4} natural units), but the time-averaged ensemble is a stationary state of the hydrodynamic evolution. We close by discussing logical extensions of the results to similar systems of quantum particles.
Abstract Inspired by recent results on the non-equilibrium dynamics of many-body quantum systems, we study the classical hard rod problem in one dimension with initial domain wall condition. Hard rods are an integrable system, in the sense that for each velocity the density of particles is locally conserved. It was proven by Boldrighini et al (1983 J. Stat. Phys . 31 577) that on the hydrodynamic space-time scale, the fluid of hard rods satisfies Euler-type equations which comprise all conservation laws. We provide the general solution to these equations on the line, with an initial condition where the left and right halves are, asymptotically, in different states. The solution is interpreted as being composed of a continuum of contact discontinuities, one for each velocity. This is a classical counterpart of the transport problem solved recently in quantum integrable systems. We also discuss the Navier–Stokes (viscous) corrections, and study its effect on the broadening of the contact discontinuity and on entropy production.
We consider a one-dimensional gas of hard rods, one of the simplest examples of an interacting integrable model. It is well known that the hydrodynamics of such integrable models can be understood by viewing the system as a gas of quasiparticles. Here, we explore the dynamics of individual quasiparticles for a variety of initial conditions of the background gas. The mean, variance, and two-time correlations are computed exactly and lead to a picture of quasiparticles as drifting Brownian particles. For the case of a homogeneous background, we show that the motion of two tagged quasiparticles is strongly correlated, and they move like a rigid rod at late times. Apart from a microscopic derivation based on the mapping to point particles, we provide an alternate derivation which emphasizes that quasiparticle fluctuations are related to initial phase-space fluctuations, which are carried over in time by Euler scale dynamics. For the homogeneous state, we use the Brownian motion picture to develop a Dean-Kawasaki-type fluctuating hydrodynamic theory, formally having the same structure as that derived recently by Ferrari and Olla. We discuss differences with existing proposals on the hydrodynamics of hard rods and some puzzles.
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.