Scientific Calendar Event



Starts 10 Jul 2014 12:00
Ends 10 Jul 2014 18:00
Central European Time
SISSA, Santorio Building, Room 138
Isolated integrable quantum systems do not relax to a thermal state even locally due to the extra conserved quantities that they possess. The so-called Generalized Gibbs Ensemble (GGE) was proposed to capture the steady state of integrable systems, but it has not been put to a stringent test for genuinely interacting systems. In the talk I will review our work on the non-equilibrium time evolution of the spin-1/2 anisotropic Heisenberg (XXZ) spin chain, where we found that short-ranged spin correlators in the long-time limit deviate significantly from predictions based on the GGE hypothesis. By computing the asymptotic spin correlators within the quench action formalism based on exact overlaps, however, we find excellent agreement with the numerical data. I will show why this result can be considered as conclusive evidence for the failure of the GGE and I will discuss the possible implications of this finding.
  • M. de Comelli