After a sudden disruption, weakly interacting quantum systems first relax to a prethermalized state that can be described by perturbation theory and a generalized Gibbs ensemble. Using these properties of the prethermalized state we perturbatively de
rive a kinetic equation which becomes a quantum Boltzmann equation in the scaling limit of vanishing interaction. Applying this to interaction quenches in the fermionic Hubbard model we find that the momentum distribution relaxes to the thermal prediction of statistical mechanics. For not too large interaction, this two-stage scenario provides a quantitative understanding of the time evolution leading from the initial pure via a metastable prethermal to the final thermal state.
We use the analytical solution of the quantum Rabi model to obtain absolutely convergent series expressions of the exact eigenstates and their scalar products with Fock states. This enables us to calculate the numerically exact time evolution of <sig
ma_x(t)> and <sigma_z(t)> for all regimes of the coupling strength, without truncation of the Hilbert space. We find a qualitatively different behavior of both observables which can be related to their representations in the invariant parity subspaces.
