We study three aspects of quantum nonequilibrium dynamics; (1) transport of conserved quantities, (2) entanglement spreading, and (3) construction of local operators which slowly relax to thermal equilibrium. Motivated by recent progresses in ultracold atom experiments, we first analyze transport phenomena of a population imbalanced two-component fermi gas with arbitrary strength of inter-species interaction in three dimension. Using the Boltzmann kinetic equation at dilute regime, we obtain the transport coefficients of linear responses to gradients of temperature and chemical potential imbalance. We identify the magneto-caloric effects, and determine how these effects depend on interaction strength and population imbalance. Then, we propose an experimental protocol to observe these effects in an experiment with ultracold atoms. Next, we study entanglement spreading in a one-dimensional quantum Ising chain with longitudinal and transverse fields, which is diffusive and nonintegrable. Fully diagonalizing the Hamiltonian matrix, we explicitly show that the entanglement spreading is ballistic, thus faster than diffusive transport of conserved quantities. We provide a local spreading picture of entanglement entropy in terms of logarithmic negativity. Then, we discuss a role of energy conservation in entanglement spreading through analyzing a Floquet system. Lastly, we construct local operators that relax slowly to equilibrium with the same one-dimensional Hamiltonian. By showing that the Hamiltonian satisfies the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, we first conclude that this model relaxes local operators to thermal equilibrium. Then, we systematically construct local operators that relax slower than conventional diffusive modes.
We study three aspects of quantum nonequilibrium dynamics; (1) transport of conserved quantities, (2) entanglement spreading, and (3) construction of local operators which slowly relax to thermal equilibrium. Motivated by recent progresses in ultracold atom experiments, we first analyze transport phenomena of a population imbalanced two-component fermi gas with arbitrary strength of inter-species interaction in three dimension. Using the Boltzmann kinetic equation at dilute regime, we obtain the transport coefficients of linear responses to gradients of temperature and chemical potential imbalance. We identify the magneto-caloric effects, and determine how these effects depend on interaction strength and population imbalance. Then, we propose an experimental protocol to observe these effects in an experiment with ultracold atoms. Next, we study entanglement spreading in a one-dimensional quantum Ising chain with longitudinal and transverse fields, which is diffusive and nonintegrable. Fully diagonalizing the Hamiltonian matrix, we explicitly show that the entanglement spreading is ballistic, thus faster than diffusive transport of conserved quantities. We provide a local spreading picture of entanglement entropy in terms of logarithmic negativity. Then, we discuss a role of energy conservation in entanglement spreading through analyzing a Floquet system. Lastly, we construct local operators that relax slowly to equilibrium with the same one-dimensional Hamiltonian. By showing that the Hamiltonian satisfies the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, we first conclude that this model relaxes local operators to thermal equilibrium. Then, we systematically construct local operators that relax slower than conventional diffusive modes.
We explore the dynamics of the entanglement entropy near equilibrium in highly entangled pure states of two quantum-chaotic spin chains undergoing unitary time evolution. We examine the relaxation to equilibrium from initial states with either less or more entanglement entropy than the equilibrium value, as well as the dynamics of the spontaneous fluctuations of the entanglement that occur in equilibrium. For the spin chain with a time-independent Hamiltonian and thus an extensive conserved energy, we find slow relaxation of the entanglement entropy near equilibration. Such slow relaxation is absent in a Floquet spin chain with a Hamiltonian that is periodic in time and thus has no local conservation law. Therefore, we argue that slow diffusive energy transport is responsible for the slow relaxation of the entanglement entropy in the Hamiltonian system.
The thermalization of one-dimensional quantum systems may be severely slowed by weak links, e.g., by the Griffiths regions that dominate the long-time dynamics of a system close to the many-body-localization transition. Here, the authors construct universal coarse-grained descriptions for entanglement production and for the dynamics of quantum operators in systems with weak links. They reveal unexpected differences between these processes (for example, entanglement growth can be slower than linear in time even when operators spread ballistically). The universal physics is explained using simple classical effective models. The authors' analysis of the spreading of quantum information and of conserved quantities shows that thermalization in the presence of weak links has a rich structure, featuring multiple dynamic length scales that diverge with different powers of time.
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.
The goal of this thesis is to study the transport properties and real-time dynamics of quantum magnets and ultra-cold atomic gases in one spatial dimension using numerical methods. The focus will be on the discussion of diffusive versus ballistic dynamics along with a detailed analysis of characteristic velocities in ballistic regimes. For the simulation of time-dependent density profiles we use the adaptive time-dependent density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). This numerical method allows for the simulation of time-dependent wave functions close to as well as far from equilibrium in a controlled manner. The studies of one-dimensional quantum magnets are partially motivated by the experimental evidence for a highly anisotropic and for insulators comparably high thermal conductivity of certain cuprates. We use linear response theory to study transport coefficients at arbitrary temperatures by diagonalizing small systems exactly and then calculating the current-current correlation functions. As first application we discuss the spin transport in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain with anisotropic exchange interactions (XXZ-chain). The second application of exact diagonalization, here in combination with time-dependent DMRG, is a discussion of the transverse components of the current-current correlation function. While usually only a Zeeman field is considered in the theory of transport coefficients, we here investigate the dynamic induced by an additional transverse magnetic field. We find that in this scenario the current-current correlation function exhibits coherent oscillations. In addition a second non-trivial frequency, different from the one expected from the usual Larmor precession, emerges and is studied varying temperature and field. Finally we calculate the frequency-dependent spin and heat conductivity of dimerized spin chains in a magnetic field. Motivated by the recent experimental studies of the phase diagram of C5H12N2CuBr4 we take the dimerized chain as a minimal model that exhibits features of the low-temperature region of the observed phase diagram. As a main result, the spin and heat conductivity obtained from linear response theory are enhanced in the field-induced gapless phase. The last application in the field of one-dimensional quantum magnets is the simulation of time-dependent energy-density wave-packets close to as well as far from equilibrium using the time-dependent density renormalization group. The main results are ballistic energy dynamics independently of how far out-of-equilibrium the initial state is and a detailed understanding of the average expansion velocity. The applications in the field of ultra-cold atomic gases focus on the sudden expansion of an initially trapped gas into an empty optical lattice. This setup was recently realized in an experiment performed by U. Schneider {\it et al.} and discussed in the context of electronic transport in the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model. Here we investigate the sudden expansion of three different setups: For the expansion of a spin-balanced cloud of fermions, we identify the ballistic regime, and therein investigate the average expansion velocity of the cloud. As a main result the expansion velocity is determined by a small subset of the initial condition over a wide range of parameters. For instance, the Mott-insulating phase of the Hubbard model is characterized by a constant expansion velocity independently of the strength of the interaction. In the case of spinless bosons, we study the expansion from initial states that have a fixed particle number per lattice site and a certain concentration of defects. We study the expansion velocity as a function of interaction strength and investigate whether the time-dependent momentum distribution functions indicate a dynamical quasi-condensation. The last example is the sudden expansion of a spin-polarized gas of fermions in the presence of attractive interactions. This study is motivated by current effort to experimentally detect the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov state. Our results for the time-dependent momentum distribution functions and the wave-function of the pair condensate suggest that the signatures of the FFLO state vanish quickly, yet a stationary form of the momentum distribution also emerges fast. The latter is shown to be determined by the initial conditions, which might eventually allow for an indirect detection of the FFLO phase.
The dynamics and thermalization of classical systems have been extensively studied in the past. However, the corresponding quantum phenomena remain, to a large extent, uncharted territory. Recent experiments with ultracold quantum gases have at last allowed exploration of the coherent dynamics of isolated quantum systems, as well as observation of non-equilibrium phenomena that challenge our current understanding of the dynamics of quantum many-body systems. These experiments have also posed many new questions. How can we control the dynamics to engineer new states of matter? Given that quantum dynamics is unitary, under which conditions can we expect observables of the system to reach equilibrium values that can be predicted by conventional statistical mechanics? And, how do the observables dynamically approach their statistical equilibrium values? Could the approach to equilibrium be hampered if the system is trapped in long-lived metastable states characterized, for example, by a certain distribution of topological defects? How does the dynamics depend on the way the system is perturbed, such as changing, as a function of time and at a given rate, a parameter across a quantum critical point? What if, conversely, after relaxing to a steady state, the observables cannot be described by the standard equilibrium ensembles of statistical mechanics? How would they depend on the initial conditions in addition to the other properties of the system, such as the existence of conserved quantities? The search for answers to questions like these is fundamental to a new research field that is only beginning to be explored, and to which researchers with different backgrounds, such as nuclear, atomic, and condensed-matter physics, as well as quantum optics, can make, and are making, important contributions. This body of knowledge has an immediate application to experiments in the field of ultracold atomic gases, but can also fundamentally change the way we approach and understand many-body quantum systems. This focus issue of New Journal Physics brings together both experimentalists and theoreticians working on these problems to provide a comprehensive picture of the state of the field. Focus on Dynamics and Thermalization in Isolated Quantum Many-Body Systems Contents Spin squeezing of high-spin, spatially extended quantum fields Jay D Sau, Sabrina R Leslie, Marvin L Cohen and Dan M Stamper-Kurn Thermodynamic entropy of a many-body energy eigenstate J M Deutsch Ground states and dynamics of population-imbalanced Fermi condensates in one dimension Masaki Tezuka and Masahito Ueda Relaxation dynamics in the gapped XXZ spin-1/2 chain Jorn Mossel and Jean-Sébastien Caux Canonical thermalization Peter Reimann Minimally entangled typical thermal state algorithms E M Stoudenmire and Steven R White Manipulation of the dynamics of many-body systems via quantum control methods Julie Dinerman and Lea F Santos Multimode analysis of non-classical correlations in double-well Bose–Einstein condensates Andrew J Ferris and Matthew J Davis Thermalization in a quasi-one-dimensional ultracold bosonic gas I E Mazets and J Schmiedmayer Two simple systems with cold atoms: quantum chaos tests and non-equilibrium dynamics Cavan Stone, Yassine Ait El Aoud, Vladimir A Yurovsky and Maxim Olshanii On the speed of fluctuations around thermodynamic equilibrium Noah Linden, Sandu Popescu, Anthony J Short and Andreas Winter A quantum central limit theorem for non-equilibrium systems: exact local relaxation of correlated states M Cramer and J Eisert Quantum quench dynamics of the sine-Gordon model in some solvable limits A Iucci and M A Cazalilla Nonequilibrium quantum dynamics of atomic dark solitons A D Martin and J Ruostekoski Quantum quenches in the anisotropic spin-1⁄2 Heisenberg chain: different approaches to many-body dynamics far from equilibrium Peter Barmettler, Matthias Punk, Vladimir Gritsev, Eugene Demler and Ehud Altman Crossover from adiabatic to sudden interaction quenches in the Hubbard model: prethermalization and non-equilibrium dynamics Michael Moeckel and Stefan Kehrein Quantum quenches in integrable field theories Davide Fioretto and Giuseppe Mussardo Dynamical delocalization of Majorana edge states by sweeping across a quantum critical point A Bermudez, L Amico and M A Martin-Delgado Thermometry with spin-dependent lattices D McKay and B DeMarco Near-adiabatic parameter changes in correlated systems: influence of the ramp protocol on the excitation energy Martin Eckstein and Marcus Kollar Sudden change of the thermal contact between two quantum systems J Restrepo and S Camalet Reflection of a Lieb–Liniger wave packet from the hard-wall potential D Jukić and H Buljan Probing interaction-induced ferromagnetism in optical superlattices J von Stecher, E Demler, M D Lukin and A M Rey Sudden interaction quench in the quantum sine-Gordon model Javier Sabio and Stefan Kehrein Dynamics of an inhomogeneous quantum phase transition Jacek Dziarmaga and Marek M Rams
In this Thesis I present the results of four research projects I carried out during my Ph.D. training at SISSA. The broad topic of my research was the mechanism of relaxation in isolated, integrable quantum systems. Roughly speaking, integrable quantum systems are one-dimensional lattice models or field theories that feature an extensively large number of conservation laws beyond energy and momentum conservation, which greatly influence their dynamical behaviour. Integrable systems have enjoyed a considerable interest in the last decade, mainly due to the development of ultracold atomic techniques. These techniques made it possible to implement experimentally a wealth of one-dimensional quantum models whose significance had been purely theoretical before. The theoretical interest in integrable systems stems in part from the fact that in many aspects they are exactly solvable. Exact analytical formulas are available for their spectrum and their equilibrium thermodynamic properties, creating an incentive to study analytically their non-equilibrium behaviour as well. Exact results for the dynamics of integrable systems may serve as a benchmark for confirming theories in statistical mechanics or testing approximative methods. To this day, computing analytically the entire time evolution of observables in a genuinely interacting integrable system is prohibitively difficult in general. In this Thesis, I concentrate on the description of the system at long times after it is brought out of equilibrium. Homogeneous, translationally invariant integrable systems are expected to relax to a stationary state, in which local observables are described by a generalization of the Gibbs ensemble that takes into consideration all the conservation laws beyond the energy. Two of the projects presented here concern this relaxed state. In Chapter 2, a method is presented for computing the Rényi entropies of the Generalized Gibbs Ensemble describing the relaxed state in the integrable Heisen- berg XXZ spin chain. Rényi entropies provide information about the relaxed state and its entanglement properties, going beyond the ordinary von Neumann thermo- dynamic entropy. The method presented there is very general; in principle it works in any integrable model and any translationally invariant thermodynamic macrostate. An alternative to the GGE in describing relaxed states after a quantum quench is the Quench Action approach. This approach is based on the explicit analytical knowledge of the overlaps between the initial state and the Hamiltonian eigenstates. In Chapter 3, this approach is generalized to a spin-1 integrable spin chain, the SU(3) invariant Lai–Sutherland model. The evolution of entanglement is then studied using the quasiparticle picture, which features ballistically propagating classical particle pairs carrying entanglement. If the requirement of translational invariance of the initial state is relaxed, various transport phenomena arise in integrable systems. The evolution of slowly varying, smoothly distributed states is described by a generalization of hydrodynamics, which takes into consideration the infinitely many local conservation laws. At the scale of non-diffusive, ballistic transport, the main feature of this generalized hydrodynamics (GHD) is the existence of continuity equations for the occupation number of each mode. Further two projects are presented in this Thesis which are concerned with GHD.I n Chapter 4, a numerical method is presented for computing the evolution of entanglement entropies within GHD. This method combines the quasiparticle picture of entanglement with a molecular dynamics simulation of GHD, the so-called fleagas. Numerical evidence is shown that this method reproduces previously known analytical results in GHD. Its versatility is demonstrated by computing another entanglement-related quantity, the mutual information, for which no analytical results are available. Finally, in Chapter 5, the GHD framework is generalized to a system of spin-1/2 fermions with repulsive contact interaction, the Yang–Gaudin model. It is shown that at low temperatures, the dynamics of the system is described by the superposition of two uncoupled, inhomogeneous conformal field theories. This fact can be interpreted as a separation of the spin and the charge degrees of freedom of the system.