Maxim Olshanii

Thermalization and its mechanism for generic isolated quantum systems.

An understanding of the temporal evolution of isolated many-body quantum systems has long been elusive. Recently, meaningful experimental studies of the problem have become possible, stimulating theoretical interest. In generic isolated systems, non-equilibrium dynamics is expected to result in thermalization: a relaxation to states in which the values of macroscopic quantities are stationary, universal with respect to widely differing initial conditions, and predictable using statistical mechanics. However, it is not obvious what feature of many-body quantum mechanics makes quantum thermalization possible in a sense analogous to that in which dynamical chaos makes classical thermalization possible. For example, dynamical chaos itself cannot occur in an isolated quantum system, in which the time evolution is linear and the spectrum is discrete. Some recent studies even suggest that statistical mechanics may give incorrect predictions for the outcomes of relaxation in such systems. Here we demonstrate that a generic isolated quantum many-body system does relax to a state well described by the standard statistical-mechanical prescription. Moreover, we show that time evolution itself plays a merely auxiliary role in relaxation, and that thermalization instead happens at the level of individual eigenstates, as first proposed by Deutsch and Srednicki. A striking consequence of this eigenstate-thermalization scenario, confirmed for our system, is that knowledge of a single many-body eigenstate is sufficient to compute thermal averages—any eigenstate in the microcanonical energy window will do, because they all give the same result.

Relaxation in a completely integrable many-body quantum system: an ab initio study of the dynamics of the highly excited states of 1D lattice hard-core bosons.

In this Letter we pose the question of whether a many-body quantum system with a full set of conserved quantities can relax to an equilibrium state, and, if it can, what the properties of such a state are. We confirm the relaxation hypothesis through an ab initio numerical investigation of the dynamics of hard-core bosons on a one-dimensional lattice. Further, a natural extension of the Gibbs ensemble to integrable systems results in a theory that is able to predict the mean values of physical observables after relaxation. Finally, we show that our generalized equilibrium carries more memory of the initial conditions than the usual thermodynamic one. This effect may have many experimental consequences, some of which have already been observed in the recent experiment on the nonequilibrium dynamics of one-dimensional hard-core bosons in a harmonic potential [T. Kinoshita et al., Nature (London) 440, 900 (2006)10.1038/nature04693].

Bosons in Cigar-Shaped Traps: Thomas-Fermi Regime, Tonks-Girardeau Regime, and In Between

We present a quantitative analysis of the experimental accessibility of the Tonks-Girardeau gas in present-day experiments with cigar-trapped alkalis. For this purpose we derive, using a Bethe ansatz generated local equation of state, a set of hydrostatic equations describing one-dimensional, delta-interacting Bose gases trapped in a harmonic potential. The resulting solutions cover the entire range of atomic densities.

Hard-core bosons on optical superlattices: Dynamics and relaxation in the superfluid and insulating regimes

We study the ground-state properties and nonequilibrium dynamics of hard-core bosons confined in one-dimensional lattices in the presence of an additional periodic potential (superlattice) and a harmonic trap. The dynamics is analyzed after a sudden switch-on or switch-off of the superlattice potential, which can bring the system into insulating or superfluid phases, respectively. A collapse and revival of the zero-momentum peak can be seen in the first case. We study in detail the relaxation of these integrable systems towards equilibrium. We show how after relaxation time averages of physical observables, like the momentum distribution function, can be predicted by means of a generalization of the Gibbs distribution.

Collisions, correlations, and integrability in atom waveguides

Abstract Elongated atom traps can confine ultracold gases in the quasi-one-dimensional regime. We review both the theory of these atom waveguides and their experimental realizations, with emphasis on the collisions of waveguide-bound particles. Under certain conditions, quasi-one-dimensional gases are well described by integrable one-dimensional many-body models with exact quantum solutions. We review the thermodynamic and correlation properties of one such model that has been experimentally realized, that of Lieb and Liniger. We describe the necessary criteria for integrability and its observable effects. We also consider ways to lift integrability, along with some observable effects of non-integrability.

Rigorous approach to the problem of ultraviolet divergencies in dilute Bose gases.

In this Letter we consider a system of N pairwise finite-range interacting atoms and prove rigorously that in the zero-range interaction limit all the eigenstates and eigenenergies of the Hamiltonian converge to those corresponding to N atoms interacting via the Fermi-Huang regularized pseudopotential. Next, we show that the latter eigensystem (if treated exactly) is invariant under a nontrivial transformation of the interaction potential. Finally, we realize that most of the approximate schemes of many-body physics do not exhibit this invariance: We use this property to resolve all inconsistencies of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov variational formalism known thus far.

Field-Induced Magnetic Order in Quantum Spin Liquids

We study magnetic-field-induced three-dimensional ordering transitions in low-dimensional quantum spin liquids, such as weakly coupled, antiferromagnetic spin- 1/2 Heisenberg dimers and ladders. Using stochastic series expansion quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we obtain the critical scaling exponents which dictate the power-law dependence of the transition temperature on the magnetic field. These are compared with recent experiments on candidate materials and with predictions for the Bose-Einstein condensation of magnons. The critical exponents deviate from isotropic mean-field theory and exhibit different scaling behavior at the lower and upper critical magnetic fields.

Example of a Quantum Anomaly in the Physics of Ultracold Gases

In this Letter, we propose an experimental scheme for the observation of a quantum anomaly--quantum-mechanical symmetry breaking--in a two-dimensional harmonically trapped Bose gas. The anomaly manifests itself in a shift of the monopole excitation frequency away from the value dictated by the Pitaevskii-Rosch dynamical symmetry [L. P. Pitaevskii and A. Rosch, Phys. Rev. A 55, R853 (1997)]. While the corresponding classical Gross-Pitaevskii equation and the hydrodynamic equations derived from it do exhibit this symmetry, it is--as we show in our paper--violated under quantization. The resulting frequency shift is of the order of 1% of the carrier, well in reach for modern experimental techniques. We propose using the dipole oscillations as a frequency gauge.

Theory of spinor Fermi and Bose gases in tight atom waveguides

Divergence-free pseudo-potentials for spatially even- and odd-wave interactions in spinor Fermi gases in tight atom waveguides are derived. The Fermi-Bose mapping method is used to relate the effectively one-dimensional fermionic many-body problem to that of a spinor Bose gas. Depending on the relative magnitudes of the even- and odd-wave interactions, the N-atom ground state may have total spin S=0, S=N/2, and possibly also intermediate values, the case S=N/2 applying near a p-wave Feshbach resonance, where the N-fermion ground state is space-antisymmetric and spin-symmetric. In this case the fermionic ground state maps to the spinless bosonic Lieb-Liniger gas. An external magnetic field with a longitudinal gradient causes a Stern-Gerlach spatial separation of the corresponding trapped Fermi gas with respect to various values of S{sub z}.

Memory of the initial conditions in an incompletely chaotic quantum system: universal predictions with application to cold atoms.

Two zero-range-interacting atoms in a circular, transversely harmonic waveguide are used as a test bench for a quantitative description of the crossover between integrability and chaos in a quantum system with no selection rules. For such systems we show that the expectation value after relaxation of a generic observable is given by a linear interpolation between its initial and thermal expectation values. The variable of this interpolation is universal; it governs this simple law to cover the whole spectrum of the chaotic behavior from integrable regime through the well-developed quantum chaos. The predictions are confirmed for the waveguide system, where the mode occupations and the trapping energy were used as the observables of interest; a variety of the initial states and a full range of the interaction strengths have been tested.