Quantum quenches in disordered systems: Approach to thermal equilibrium without a typical relaxation time

TitleQuantum quenches in disordered systems: Approach to thermal equilibrium without a typical relaxation time
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2012
AuthorsKhatami, E., Rigol M., Relaño A., and Garcia-Garcia A. M.
JournalPhysical Review E
Volume85
Pagination050102(R)
Abstract

We study spectral properties and the dynamics after a quench of one-dimensional spinless fermions with short-range interactions and long-range random hopping. We show that a sufficiently fast decay of the hopping term promotes localization effects at finite temperature, which prevents thermalization even if the classical motion is chaotic. For slower decays, we find that thermalization does occur. However, within this model, the latter regime falls in an unexpected universality class, namely, observables exhibit a power-law (as opposed to an exponential) approach to their thermal expectation values.

URLhttp://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.85.050102
DOI10.1103/PhysRevE.85.050102
arXiv.org

http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.0787