Thermalization of a Strongly Interacting Closed Spin System: From Coherent Many-Body Dynamics to a Fokker-Planck Equation
- 14 March 2012
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 108 (11), 110603
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.108.110603
Abstract
Thermalization has been shown to occur in a number of closed quantum many-body systems, but the description of the actual thermalization dynamics is prohibitively complex. Here, we present a model\char22{}in one and two dimensions\char22{}for which we can analytically show that the evolution into thermal equilibrium is governed by a Fokker-Planck equation derived from the underlying quantum dynamics. Our approach does not rely on a formal distinction of weakly coupled bath and system degrees of freedom. The results show that transitions within narrow energy shells lead to a dynamics which is dominated by entropy and establishes detailed balance conditions that determine both the eventual equilibrium state and the nonequilibrium relaxation to it.Keywords
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