Physics (Internal)

Dynamics of Thermalization in nanoscale systems

This event is part of the Condensed Matter Theory Seminar Series.

We study the decoherence and thermalization dynamics of a nanoscale system coupled nonperturbatively to a fully quantum-mechanical bath. The system is prepared out of equilibrium in a pure state of the complete system. We propose a random matrix model and show analytically that there are two robust temporal regimes in the approach of the system to equilibrium-an initial Gaussian decay followed by an exponential tail, consistent with numerical results on small interacting lattices.