Prescaling relaxation to nonthermal attractors

Abstract

We study how isotropic and homogeneous far-from-equilibrium quantum systems relax to nonthermal attractors, which are of interest for cold atoms and nuclear collisions. We demonstrate that a first-order ordinary differential equation governs the self-similar approach to nonthermal attractors, i.e., the prescaling. We also show that certain natural scaling-breaking terms induce logarithmically slow corrections that prevent the scaling exponents from reaching the constant values during the system's lifetime. We propose that, analogously to hydrodynamic attractors, the appropriate mathematical structure to describe such dynamics is the transseries. We verify our analytic predictions with state-of-the-art 2PI simulations of the large-N vector model and QCD kinetic theory.

5 pages, 3 figures, 5 pages Appendix, PRL version (minor changes)

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• Emergence of a Turbulent Cascade in a Quantum Gas
• Universality far from equilibrium: From superfluid Bose gases to heavy-ion collisions
• Hydrodynamic Attractors in Ultrarelativistic Nuclear Collisions
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• Adiabatic Hydrodynamization and the Emergence of Attractors: a Unified Description of Hydrodynamization in Kinetic Theory
• Kelvin waves in nonequilibrium universal dynamics of relativistic scalar field theories
• Condensation and prescaling in spatial Polyakov loop correlations far from equilibrium
• Adiabatic hydrodynamization and quasinormal modes of nonthermal attractors
• Self-similar kinetics for gravitational Bose-Einstein condensation