We study the quantum evolution of one-dimensional Bose gases immediately after several variants of high-energy quenches, both theoretically and experimentally. Using the advantages conveyed by the relative simplicity of these nearly integrable many-body systems, we are able to differentiate the behaviors of two distinct but often temporally overlapping processes, hydrodynamization and local prethermalization. We show that the hydrodynamization epoch is itself characterized by two independent timescales, an oscillation period and an observable-dependent damping time. We also show how the existence of a hydrodynamization epoch depends on the exact nature of the high-energy quench. There is a universal character to our findings, which can be applied to the short-time behavior of any interacting many-body quantum system after a sudden high-energy quench. We specifically discuss its potential relevance to heavy-ion collisions.
We study the quantum evolution of one-dimensional Bose gases immediately after several variants of high-energy quenches, both theoretically and experimentally. Using the advantages conveyed by the relative simplicity of these nearly integrable many-body systems, we are able to differentiate the behaviors of two distinct but often temporally overlapping processes, hydrodynamization and local prethermalization. We show that the hydrodynamization epoch is itself characterized by two independent timescales, an oscillation period and an observable-dependent damping time. We also show how the existence of a hydrodynamization epoch depends on the exact nature of the high-energy quench. There is a universal character to our findings, which can be applied to the short-time behavior of any interacting many-body quantum system after a sudden high-energy quench. We specifically discuss its potential relevance to heavy-ion collisions.
Hydrodynamization refers to the remarkably rapid process in relativistic heavy-ion collisions by which hydrodynamic descriptions become applicable. Following the observation of analogous behavior in ultracold one-dimensional (1D) Bose gases, hydrodynamization has been conjectured to be a universal dynamical phenomenon in quantum systems following high-energy quenches. Theoretical studies in this cold-atom setting have so far been restricted to quenches from ground states. Here we study how nonzero temperatures affect hydrodynamization. Specifically, using a homogeneous 1D gas of hard-core bosons, we explore how the initial temperature affects the timescales associated with hydrodynamization and prethermalization following a Bragg-pulse quench. We find that while the hydrodynamization coherence time remains unchanged, increasing temperature shortens both the damping time of the hydrodynamization oscillations and the prethermalization time. We argue that this is mainly the result of the broadening of the initial rapidity distribution, and introduce a nonzero-temperature dephasing time defined in terms of the extent of the rapidity distribution.
While the mechanisms governing the equilibrium properties of quantum gases are today relatively well understood, their non-equilibrium counterparts remain largely unknown. In this thesis, we theoretically explore the non-equilibrium physics of low-dimensional, interacting Bose gases in two representative configurations. In the first one, we consider an isolated Bose superfluid in two dimensions following a quench of the coupling constant. Using a quantum hydrodynamic description combined with a Keldysh field formalism, we derive quantum kinetic equations for the low-energy phononic excitations of the system. This enables us to describe the system's evolution from its short-time (prethermal) coherent dynamics to its long-time thermalization. In particular, we derive and discuss the Landau-Beliaev damping rates both in the standard perturbative approach and within a self-consistent extension of the theory. The results are also discussed in the light of recent experiments. Our second study explores a one-dimensional, periodically-driven quantum system, a Bose gas subjected to periodically-kicked interactions. In the limit of infinitely short kicks, this system was previously shown to exhibit a fast exponential spreading of the wave function. By revisiting this problem for kicks of arbitrary duration, we demonstrate that, in this case, the spreading is not exponential but sub-diffusive at long time. Our findings indicate that the breakdown of exponential spreading occurs at very short times even for extremely short kicks, suggesting that sub-diffusion is more the rule than the exception in that system.
We study theoretically the nonequilibrium dynamics of a two-dimensional (2D) uniform Bose superfluid following a quantum quench, from its short-time (prethermal) coherent dynamics to its long-time thermalization. Using a quantum hydrodynamic description combined with a Keldysh field formalism, we derive quantum kinetic equations for the low-energy phononic excitations of the system and characterize both their normal and anomalous momentum distributions. We apply this formalism to the interaction quench of a 2D Bose gas and study the ensuing dynamics of its quantum structure factor and coherence function, both recently measured experimentally. Our results indicate that, in two dimensions, a description in terms of independent quasiparticles becomes quickly inaccurate and should be systematically questioned when dealing with nonequilibrium scenarios.
We study the quench of a degenerate ultracold Bose gas to the unitary regime, where interactions are as strong as allowed by quantum mechanics. We lay the foundation of a cumulant theory able to simultaneously capture the three-body Efimov effect and ergodic evolution. After an initial period of rapid quantum depletion, a universal prethermal stage is established, characterized by a kinetic temperature and an emergent Bogoliubov dispersion law, while the microscopic degrees of freedom remain far from equilibrium. Integrability is then broken by higher-order interaction terms in the many-body Hamiltonian, leading to a momentum-dependent departure from power law to decaying exponential behavior of the occupation numbers at large momentum. We also find signatures of the Efimov effect in the many-body dynamics and make a precise identification between the observed beating phenomenon and the binding energy of an Efimov trimer. Throughout the paper, our predictions for a uniform gas are quantitatively compared with experimental results for quenched unitary Bose gases in uniform potentials.
The dynamics of strongly interacting many-body quantum systems are notoriously complex and difficult to simulate. A recently proposed theory called generalized hydrodynamics (GHD) promises to efficiently accomplish such simulations for nearly integrable systems. We test GHD with bundles of ultracold one-dimensional (1D) Bose gases by performing large trap quenches in both the strong and intermediate coupling regimes. We find that theory and experiment agree well over dozens of trap oscillations, for average dimensionless coupling strengths that range from 0.3 to 9.3. Our results show that GHD can accurately describe the quantum dynamics of a 1D nearly integrable experimental system even when particle numbers are low and density changes are large and fast.
This thesis is concerned with non-equilibrium phenomena in interacting quantum many-body systems. Specifically, we investigate the time-evolution and relaxation dynamics of Bose gases in a highly restricted geometry, which constrains the dynamics to one spatial dimension. This leads to a description of the system in terms of a simple model Hamiltonian which permits exact many-body quantum mechanical solutions due to its integrability. In the first part of this thesis, a computational method is developed to obtain experimentally relevant correlation functions in the framework of the coordinate Bethe ansatz. We employ this method to compute exact ground-state correlation functions of the Lieb-Liniger gas for up to seven particles covering the whole regime of repulsive interactions. We also investigate the dynamics of the system after an instantaneous change of the interaction strength. This quantum quench deposits large amounts of energy that cannot be dissipated due to the system being closed, and so the dynamics far from equilibrium are probed. We prepare the system in two different initial states, and quench to the same final interaction strength. The latter is determined in such a way that the added energy due to the quench is the same for both scenarios. Conventional statistical mechanics predicts the same relaxed state, but due to the integrability of the system all considered correlation functions of the relaxed states differ from each other and also from the thermal ones. We then investigate the dynamics and relaxed state for a quench from zero to repulsive interactions in more detail, focussing on the mechanism of relaxation and the involved time-scales. We find that local correlation functions relax on time-scales determined by the interaction strength, in contrast to non-local correlation functions, whose relaxation time-scale is proportional to the system size. Next, we employ the same methodology to study the one-dimensional Bose gas with attractive interactions. In this case many-body bound states are permissible solutions of the Lieb-Liniger model. We compare exact ground-state correlation functions of up to seven particles to their corresponding mean-field solution. The latter displays a quantum phase transition at a critical interaction strength, marking the transition from a uniform-density state to a localized bright soliton. Our exact results agree remarkably well with the corresponding mean-field solution past the critical point. We also investigate the dynamics following an interaction strength quench, starting again from the non-interacting ground state. Bound states strongly influence correlation functions for all post-quench interaction strengths, and local correlation functions are largely increased compared to their initial value. In the last part of this thesis, we investigate the behavior of the one-dimensional Bose gas under periodic driving of the interaction strength. To this end, we extend the coordinate Bethe-ansatz formalism by employing Floquet theory to obtain solutions for the full time- dependent Hamiltonian. This realizes an extension to non-integrable systems in a way that allows controlled breaking of integrability. We compare the dynamics of the system following an interaction quench to a fixed final interaction strength to that of a system with periodically modulated post-quench interaction strength. For fast driving, the system evolves according to the time-averaged Hamiltonian and correlation functions are nearly identical to those of the undriven system. The response of the system qualitatively changes at resonances of the time-averaged Hamiltonian, where we observe energy absorption and a marked change in correlation functions. However, the system does not absorb energy indefinitely.