Is thermalization of macroscopic quantum systems unavoidable ?

Speaker: Prof. Marcin Mierzejewski
Affiliation: Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland
Seminar language: English

Dynamics of quantum systems is typically a few orders of magnitude faster than the time-scales which are relevant for our everyday experience. In particular, the relaxation times in solids with strong electronic correlations may be of the order of a few tens of femtoseconds. At longer time, quantum systems typically approach their thermal equilibrium. Yet, for some systems the relaxation may be slowed down or even completely frozen. Approaching the thermal equilibrium unavoidably implies the loss of information concerning the initial quantum state. Therefore, methods of avoiding or slowing down the thermalization might be important for the future applications. However first of all, understanding such unusually slow dynamics represents an interesting challenge, that may be important for diverse branches of physics, particularly for the condensed matter physics and the statistical physics. During the talk I will discuss the basic concepts concerning thermalization and discuss a few categories of quantum many-body systems relevant for the absence of thermalization or for a very slow thermalization.

Link to the MSTeams meeting

Chairman: Ireneusz Weymann

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