Local Thermal Equilibrium States in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory
arXiv:1602.09110 · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-26902-3_6
Abstract
It is well-known that thermal equilibrium states in quantum statistical mechanics and quantum field theory can be described in a mathematically rigorous manner by means of the so-called Kubo-Martin-Schwinger (KMS) condition, which is based on certain analyticity and periodicity properties of correlation functions. On the other hand, the characterization of non-equilibrium states which only locally have thermal properties still constitutes a challenge in quantum field theory. We discuss a recent proposal for characterization of such states by a generalized KMS condition. The connection of this proposal to a proposal by D. Buchholz, I. Ojima and H.-J. Roos for characterizing local thermal equilibrium states in quantum field theory is discussed.
14 pp., version as appeared in "Quantum Mathematical Physics", with one reference updated, "Quantum Mathematical Physics", eds. Felix Finster et al. (Proceedings of the conference "Quantum Mathematical Physics - A Bridge between Mathematics and Physics", Regensburg 2014), Birkhäuser (2016)