2013/05/16 by Tim Langen, Remi Geiger, Maximilian Kuhnert +2 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.quant-gas #cond-mat.stat-mech #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nphys2739
published as Nature Physics 9, 640-643 (2013)
arxiv created 2013/05/16 · arxiv updated 2013/10/16
We experimentally demonstrate how thermal properties in an non-equilibrium quantum many- body system emerge locally, spread in space and time, and finally lead to the globally relaxed state. In our experiment, we quench a one-dimensional (1D) Bose gas by coherently splitting it into two parts. By monitoring the phase coherence between the two parts we observe that the thermal correlations of a prethermalized state emerge locally in their final form and propagate through the system in a light-cone-like evolution. Our results underline the close link between the propagation of correlations and relaxation processes in quantum many-body systems.