2001/04/21 by Luís M. A. Bettencourt, Luis M. A. Bettencourt, Karen Pao +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.65.025015
published as Phys.Rev. D65 (2002) 025015 · 22 pages, 8 figures, uses Revtex
arxiv created 2001/04/21 · openalex publication_date 2001/12/26 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the dynamics of a spatially inhomogeneous quantum λϕ4 field theory in 1+1 dimensions in the Hartree approximation. In particular, we investigate the long-time behavior of this approximation in a variety of controlled situations, both at zero and finite temperature. The observed behavior is much richer than that in the spatially homogeneous case. Nevertheless, we show that the fields fail to thermalize in a canonical sense, as expected from analogous results in closely related (mean field) transport theory. We argue that this dynamical approximation is best suited as a means to study the short-time decay of spatially inhomogeneous fields and in the dynamics of coherent quasi-classical inhomogeneous configurations (e.g. solitons) in a background of dynamical self-consistent quantum fluctuations.