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arXiv:hep-ph/9806235 · Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields

Quantum kinetics and thermalization in an exactly solvable model

S. M. Alamoudi, D. Boyanovsky, Hector J. de Vega, R. Holman

Published Dec 7, 1998• 20 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the dynamics of relaxation and thermalization in an exactly solvable model of a quantum particle interacting with a thermal bath of oscillators with the goal of understanding the effects of off-shell processes. The focus is to compare the exact evolution of the distribution function with different approximations to the relaxational dynamics: Boltzmann, non-Markovian and Markovian quantum kinetics. The time evolution of the distribution function is evaluated exactly using different approaches where each method provides different insights. There are two different cases that are studied in detail: (i) no stable particle states below threshold of the bath and a quasiparticle resonance above it and (ii) a stable discrete exact ``particle'' state below threshold. The exact solution for the evolution allows us to investigate the concept of the formation time of a quasiparticle and to study the difference between the relaxation of the distribution of particles and quasiparticles. For the case of quasiparticles in the continuum (resonances) the exact quasiparticle distribution asymptotically tends to a statistical equilibrium distribution that differs from a simple Bose-Einstein form as a result of off-shell processes such as the strength of the quasiparticle poles, the width of the unstable particle and proximity to thresholds. In case (ii), the distribution of particles does not thermalize with the bath. We study the kinetics of thermalization and relaxation by deriving a non-Markovian quantum kinetic equation which resums the perturbative series and includes off-shell effects. A Markovian approximation that includes off-shell contributions and the usual Boltzmann equation are obtained from the quantum kinetic equation in the limit of a wide separation of time scales upon different coarse-graining assumptions. The relaxational dynamics predicted by the non-Markovian, Markovian and Boltzmann approximations are compared to the exact result of the model. The Boltzmann approach is seen to fail in the case of wide resonances and when threshold and renormalization effects are important. Implications for thermalization in field theory models are discussed.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.59.025003

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We study the dynamics of relaxation and thermalization in an exactly solvable model of a quantum particle interacting with a thermal bath of oscillators with the goal of understanding the effects of off-shell processes. The focus is to compare the exact evolution of the distribution function with different approximations to the relaxational dynamics: Boltzmann, non-Markovian and Markovian quantum kinetics. The time evolution of the distribution function is evaluated exactly using different approaches where each method provides different insights. There are two different cases that are studied in detail: (i) no stable particle states below threshold of the bath and a quasiparticle resonance above it and (ii) a stable discrete exact ``particle'' state below threshold. The exact solution for the evolution allows us to investigate the concept of the formation time of a quasiparticle and to study the difference between the relaxation of the distribution of particles and quasiparticles. For the case of quasiparticles in the continuum (resonances) the exact quasiparticle distribution asymptotically tends to a statistical equilibrium distribution that differs from a simple Bose-Einstein form as a result of off-shell processes such as the strength of the quasiparticle poles, the width of the unstable particle and proximity to thresholds. In case (ii), the distribution of particles does not thermalize with the bath. We study the kinetics of thermalization and relaxation by deriving a non-Markovian quantum kinetic equation which resums the perturbative series and includes off-shell effects. A Markovian approximation that includes off-shell contributions and the usual Boltzmann equation are obtained from the quantum kinetic equation in the limit of a wide separation of time scales upon different coarse-graining assumptions. The relaxational dynamics predicted by the non-Markovian, Markovian and Boltzmann approximations are compared to the exact result of the model. The Boltzmann approach is seen to fail in the case of wide resonances and when threshold and renormalization effects are important. Implications for thermalization in field theory models are discussed.
We study the dynamics of relaxation and thermalization in an exactly solvable model of a particle interacting with a harmonic oscillator bath. Our goal is to understand the effects of non-Markovian processes on the relaxational dynamics and to compare the exact evolution of the distribution function with approximate Markovian and non-Markovian quantum kinetics. There are two different cases that are studied in detail: (i) a quasiparticle (resonance) when the renormalized frequency of the particle is above the frequency threshold of the bath and (ii) a stable renormalized "particle" state below this threshold. The time evolution of the occupation number for the particle is evaluated exactly using different approaches that yield to complementary insights. The exact solution allows us to investigate the concept of the formation time of a quasiparticle and to study the difference between the relaxation of the distribution of bare particles and that of quasiparticles. For the case of quasiparticles, the exact occupation number asymptotically tends to a statistical equilibrium distribution that differs from a simple Bose-Einstein form as a result of off-shell processes whereas in the stable particle case, the distribution of particles does not thermalize with the bath. We derive a non-Markovian quantum kinetic equation which resums the perturbative series and includes off-shell effects. A Markovian approximation that includes off-shell contributions and the usual Boltzmann equation (energy conserving) are obtained from the quantum kinetic equation in the limit of wide separation of time scales upon different coarse-graining assumptions. The relaxational dynamics predicted by the non-Markovian, Markovian, and Boltzmann approximations are compared to the exact result. The Boltzmann approach is seen to fail in the case of wide resonances and when threshold and renormalization effects are important.
A new approach to the dynamics of relaxation and kinetics of thermalization in a scalar field theory is presented that incorporates the relevant time scales through the resummation of hard thermal loops. An alternative derivation of the kinetic equations for the "quasiparticle" distribution functions is obtained that allows a clear understanding of the different "coarse-graining" approximations usually involved in a kinetic description. This method leads to a systematic perturbative expansion to obtain the kinetic equations including hard thermal loop resummation and to an improvement including renormalization, off-shell effects, and contributions that change chemical equilibrium on short time scales. As a by-product of these methods we establish the equivalence between the relaxation time scale in the linearized equation of motion of the quasiparticles and the thermalization time scale of the quasiparticle distribution function in the "relaxation time approximation" including hard thermal loop effects. Hard thermal loop resummation dramatically modifies the scattering rate for long wavelength modes as compared to the usual (semi)classical estimate. Relaxation and kinetics are studied both in the unbroken and broken symmetry phases of the theory. The broken symmetry phase also provides the setting to obtain the contribution to the kinetic equations from processes that involve decay of a heavy scalar into light scalar particles in the medium.
We present a one-dimensional microscopic model of interacting electrons coupled to phonons that allows the exact calculation of the time evolution of the momentum distribution functions starting from a nonequilibrium initial state. The model shows relaxation features known from approximate calculations for more realistic three-dimensional models. The exact results are compared with approximate ones resulting from the use of quantum kinetic equations which avoid the assumption of completed successive scattering processes implicit in simple Boltzmann equations. To renormalize the electronic but not the phonon propagation in the non-Markovian equations yields no improvement uniform in time compared to simpler approximations. Due to the presence of the Fermi sea only the additional renormalization of the phonon propagation leads to a drastic improvement in comparison with the exact results.
We derive a non-Markovian generalization to the quantum kinetic theory described by Walser et al. [Phys. Rev. A 59, 3878 (1999)] in the absence of a condensed fraction for temperatures above the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature i.e., T>Tc.T>{T}_{c}.T>Tc​. Within this framework, quasiparticle damping arises naturally due the finite duration of a binary collision and it leads to a systematic Markov approximation from the non-Markovian Born theory. Such a self-consistent theory conserves the total energy to second order in the interaction strength. By introducing an improved damping function, we demonstrate global energy conservation at the order of the perturbation theory. Finally, we apply this kinetic theory to a simple model of an inhomogeneous Bose gas that is confined in a spherical box. By studying numerically the real-time quantum evolution towards equilibrium, we obtain damping rates and frequencies of the collective modes and illustrate the emergence of differing time scales for correlation and relaxation.
We study the thermalization of a scalar field $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}$ coupled to two other scalar fields ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{1,2}$ that constitute a bath in thermal equilibrium. For a range of masses the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}$ propagator features threshold and infrared divergences, a vanishing residue at the (quasi)particle pole, and vanishing on-shell decay rates thereby preventing the equilibration of $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}$ with the bath via on-shell processes. Inspired by the theory of quantum open systems we obtain a quantum master equation for the reduced density matrix of $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}$ that includes the time dependence of bath correlations, yielding time dependent rates in the dynamics of relaxation and allowing virtual processes with an energy q0{q}_{0}q0​ whose difference from the on-shell energy is of O(1/t)\mathcal{O}(1/t)O(1/t) at long time ttt. These off-shell processes lead to thermalization despite vanishing SSS-matrix rates. In the case of threshold divergences we find that a thermal fixed point is approached as ${e}^{\ensuremath{-}\sqrt{t/{t}^{*}}}$ with the relaxation time t∗{t}^{*}t∗ becoming shorter at high temperature as a consequence of stimulated emission and absorption. In the infrared case, the thermal fixed point is approached as ${e}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\gamma}(t)}$, where $\ensuremath{\gamma}(t)$ features a crossover between ln(t)\mathrm{ln}(t)ln(t) and ttt behavior for $t\ensuremath{\gg}1/T$. The vanishing of the residue and the crossover in relaxational dynamics in this case is strikingly reminiscent of the orthogonality catastrophe in heavy impurity systems. The results yield more general lessons on thermalization via virtual processes.
After a sudden disruption, weakly interacting quantum systems first relax to a prethermalized state that can be described by perturbation theory and a generalized Gibbs ensemble. Using these properties of the prethermalized state we perturbatively derive a kinetic equation which becomes a quantum Boltzmann equation in the scaling limit of vanishing interaction. Applying this to interaction quenches in the fermionic Hubbard model we find that the momentum distribution relaxes to the thermal prediction of statistical mechanics. For not too large interaction, this two-stage scenario provides a quantitative understanding of the time evolution leading from the initial pure via a metastable prethermal to the final thermal state.