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Письма в Журнал экспериментальной и теоретической физики

Local Quench within the Keldysh Technique

A. A. Radovskaya, Andrew G. Semenov

Published Dec 15, 2023• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The problem of quantum scalar field evolution after an instantaneous local perturbation (quench) is considered. A new approach to descriptions of a quench from an arbitrary initial state is developed in the framework of the Keldysh technique. This approach does not require the procedure of the analytical continuation, which can be ambiguous in some cases. The evolution of the energy density after local quench is calculated for a simple case, and its dependence on the interaction region width and the initial conditions is analyzed.

DOI
10.31857/s1234567823240096

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The problem of quantum scalar field evolution after an instantaneous local perturbation (quench) is considered. A new approach to descriptions of a quench from an arbitrary initial state is developed in the framework of the Keldysh technique. This approach does not require the procedure of the analytical continuation, which can be ambiguous in some cases. The evolution of the energy density after local quench is calculated for a simple case, and its dependence on the interaction region width and the initial conditions is analyzed.
The problem of quantum scalar field evolution after an instantaneous local perturbation (quench) is considered. A new approach to descriptions of a quench from an arbitrary initial state is developed in the framework of the Keldysh technique. This approach does not require the procedure of the analytical continuation, which can be ambiguous in some cases. The evolution of the energy density after local quench is calculated for a simple case, and its dependence on the interaction region width and the initial conditions is analyzed.
This work introduces a novel approach that makes it possible to take interaction into account in the problem of the evolution of a quantum field after an instantaneous local perturbation (quench). Using scalar theory gφ4g{{\varphi }^{4}}gφ4 as an example, we demonstrate a method for describing the influence of interaction on the field dynamics after a quench within the semiclassical approximation in the Keldysh technique. The proposed approach is nonperturbative in the coupling constant, valid for arbitrary initial conditions, and well suited for numerical computation. As an illustration, we show how the interaction drives thermalization toward a new stationary state of the system and leads to a loss of coherence, which manifests itself in the destruction of the interference pattern that is characteristic of the noninteracting case.
Abstract We modify the nonequilibrium Keldysh diagram technique to systematically account for non-Gaussian initial correlations. We represent information about the initial state of the system as an additional term in the Keldysh action, which is expressed in terms of the cumulants of the initial Wigner functional. This additional term leads to the appearance of additional vertices in the diagram technique. We study the role of non-Gaussian initial correlations in the further evolution of correlation functions. In particular, we show that the presence of non-Gaussian correlations of odd order leads to the generation of a mean field. We obtain Dyson equations with partially resummed self-energies and prove that diagrams with a finite number of loops contain a finite number of non-Gaussian cumulants of the initial Wigner functional. We apply the modified diagram technique to the description of the evolution of a scalar field after a quench and show that in the limit of short interaction times this technique leads to exact results.
We present a theoretical proposal for measuring correlation functions in a quantum field system based on the use of quantum quenches. Using the examples of massive and massless scalar field theories, we show that a short-term perturbation of the system leads to a dependence of the further evolution of the average field on the initial state's correlation functions. Considering two types of perturbations, namely local and nonlocal quenches, we show which correlation functions can be measured in each of these cases. The proposed procedure can be applied to study non-Gaussian correlations.
We examine in detail the relationship between smooth fast quantum quenches, characterized by a time scale δt, and instantaneous quenches, within the framework of exactly solvable mass quenches in free scalar field theory. Our earlier studies [1, 2] highlighted that the two protocols remain distinct in the limit δt → 0 because of the relation of the quench rate to the UV cut-off, i.e., 1/δt ≪ Λ always holds in the fast smooth quenches while 1/δt ∼ Λ for instantaneous quenches. Here we study UV finite quantities like correlators at finite spatial distances and the excess energy produced above the final ground state energy. We show that at late times and large distances (compared to the quench time scale) the smooth quench correlator approaches that for the instantaneous quench. At early times, we find that for small spatial separation and small δt, the correlator scales universally with δt, exactly as in the scaling of renormalized one point functions found in earlier work. At larger separation, the dependence on δt drops out. The excess energy density is finite (for finite mδt) and scales in a universal fashion for all d. However, the scaling behaviour produces a divergent result in the limit mδt → 0 for d ≥ 4, just as in an instantaneous quench, where it is UV divergent for d ≥ 4. We argue that similar results hold for arbitrary interacting theories: the excess energy density produced is expected to diverge for scaling dimensions Δ > d/2.