We study the unitary time evolution of the order parameter of a quantum system after a sudden quench in the parameter driving the transition. By mapping the dynamics onto the imaginary time path-integral in a film geometry we derive the full mean-field non-equilibrium phase diagram for a one-component order parameter. The recently discovered non-equilibrium transition is identified with the shifted critical point in films and therefore it is generally expected to occur in more than one spatial dimension. We also find that anharmonic oscillations of the order parameter are a general feature of the mean-field quench dynamics.
We study the problem of a quantum quench in which the initial state is the ground state of an inhomogeneous hamiltonian, in two different models, conformal field theory and ordinary free field theory, which are known to exhibit thermalisation of finite regions in the homogeneous case. We derive general expressions for the evolution of the energy flow and correlation functions, as well as the entanglement entropy in the conformal case. Comparison of the results of the two approaches in the regime of their common validity shows agreement up to a point further discussed. Unlike the thermal analogue, the evolution in our problem is non-diffusive and can be physically interpreted using an intuitive picture of quasiparticles emitted from the initial time hypersurface and propagating semiclassically.
We describe several results concerning global quantum quenches from states with short-range correlations to quantum critical points whose low-energy properties are described by a 1+1-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT), extending the work of Calabrese and Cardy (2006): (a) for the special class of initial states discussed in that paper we show that, once a finite region falls inside the horizon, its reduced density matrix is exponentially close in $L_2$ norm to that of a thermal Gibbs state; (b) small deformations of this initial state in general lead to a (non-Abelian) generalized Gibbs distribution (GGE) with, however, the possibility of parafermionic conserved charges; (c) small deformations of the CFT, corresponding to curvature of the dispersion relation and (non-integrable) left-right scattering, lead to a dependence of the speed of propagation on the initial state, as well as diffusive broadening of the horizon.
We study in general the time-evolution of correlation functions in a extended quantum system after the quench of a parameter in the hamiltonian. We show that correlation functions in d dimensions can be extracted using methods of boundary critical phenomena in d+1 dimensions. For d=1 this allows to use the powerful tools of conformal field theory in the case of critical evolution. Several results are obtained in generic dimension in the gaussian (mean-field) approximation. These predictions are checked against the real-time evolution of some solvable models that allows also to understand which features are valid beyond the critical evolution. All our findings may be explained in terms of a picture generally valid, whereby quasiparticles, entangled over regions of the order of the correlation length in the initial state, then propagate with a finite speed through the system. Furthermore we show that the long-time results can be interpreted in terms of a generalized Gibbs ensemble. We discuss some open questions and possible future developments.
We study the large deviations statistics of the intensive work done by changing globally a control parameter in a thermally isolated quantum many-body system. We show that, upon approaching a critical point, large deviations well below the mean work display universal features related to the critical Casimir effect in the corresponding classical system. Large deviations well above the mean are, instead, of quantum nature and not captured by the quantum-to-classical correspondence. For a bosonic system we show that in this latter regime a transition from exponential to power-law statistics, analogous to the equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation, may occur depending on the parameters of the quench and on the spatial dimensionality.
We review the imaginary time path integral approach to the quench dynamics of conformal field theories. We show how this technique can be applied to the determination of the time dependence of correlation functions and entanglement entropy for both global and local quenches. We also briefly review other quench protocols. We carefully discuss the limits of applicability of these results to realistic models of condensed matter and cold atoms.