• Corpus ID: 248798575

Thermalization of interacting quasi-one-dimensional systems

@inproceedings{Panfil2022ThermalizationOI,
  title={Thermalization of interacting quasi-one-dimensional systems},
  author={Miłosz Panfil and Sarang Gopalakrishnan and Robert M Konik},
  year={2022}
}

• M. Panfil, S. Gopalakrishnan, R. Konik
• Published 13 May 2022
• Physics

Many experimentally relevant systems are quasi-one-dimensional, consisting of nearly decoupled chains. In these systems, there is a natural separation of scales between the strong intra-chain interactions and the weak interchain coupling. When the intra-chain interactions are integrable, weak interchain couplings play a crucial part in thermalizing the system. Here, we develop a Boltzmann-equation formalism involving a collision integral that is asymptotically exact for any interacting integrable system, and apply it to develop a quantitative theory of relaxation in coupled Bose gases in the experimentally relevant Newton’s cradle setup. We find that relaxation involves a broad spectrum of timescales. We provide evidence that the Markov process governing relaxation at late times is gapless ; thus, the approach to equilibrium is generally non-exponential, even for spatially uniform perturbations.