Far-Away-From-Equilibrium Quantum Critical Conformal Dynamics: Reversibility, Thermalization, and Hydrodynamics

Abstract

Generic far-away-from-equilibrium many-body dynamics involve entropy production, and hence are thermodynamically irreversible. Near quantum critical points, an emergent conformal symmetry can impose strong constraints on entropy production rates, and in some cases completely forbid entropy production, which usually occurs for systems that deviate from quantum critical points. In this article, we illustrate how the vanishing entropy production near a quantum critical point results in reversible far-away-from-equilibrium dynamics at finite temperatures that are otherwise irreversible. Away from the quantum critical point, the quantum dynamics are damped, and our analysis directly relates the thermalization time scale to the hydrodynamic viscosity near quantum critical points with dynamical critical exponent $z=2$. We demonstrate how both controllable reversible and irreversible dynamics can be potentially studied in cold gas experiments using Feshbach resonances.

11 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Many-Body Physics with Ultracold Gases
• Theory of ultracold Fermi gases
• Collective excitations of a degenerate gas at the BEC-BCS crossover
• General coordinate invariance and conformal invariance in nonrelativistic physics: Unitary Fermi gas
• Nonrelativistic conformal field theories
• Universal Quantum Viscosity in a Unitary Fermi Gas
• Precision Measurements of Collective Oscillations in the BEC-BCS Crossover
• Exact coherent states of a harmonically confined Tonks-Girardeau gas
• Universal Properties of the Ultra-Cold Fermi Gas
• Viscosity and scale invariance in the unitary Fermi gas
• Collective modes and ballistic expansion of a Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC crossover
• Apparent low-energy scale invariance in two-dimensional Fermi gases
• Collective Modes in a Unitary Fermi Gas across the Superfluid Phase Transition

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Loss induced collective mode in one-dimensional Bose gases
• Dynamics of strongly interacting Fermi gases with time-dependent interactions: Consequence of conformal symmetry
• Thermodynamic contacts and breathing mode physics of 1D p-wave Fermi gases in the high temperature limit
• Emergent Infrared Conformal Dynamics in Strongly Interacting Quantum Gases
• Viscous Flow in a 1D Spin-Polarized Fermi Gas: the Role of Integrability on Viscosity
• Energy Dynamics of a Nonequilibrium Unitary Fermi Gas