The European Physical Journal Special Topics, 2013
We experimentally study the relaxation dynamics of a coherently split one-dimensional Bose gas us... more We experimentally study the relaxation dynamics of a coherently split one-dimensional Bose gas using matterwave interference. Measuring the full probability distributions of interference contrast reveals the prethermalization of the system to a non-thermal steady state. To describe the evolution of noise and correlations we develop a semiclassical effective description that allows us to model the dynamics as a stochastic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process.
ABSTRACT Understanding relaxation processes is an important unsolved problem in many areas of phy... more ABSTRACT Understanding relaxation processes is an important unsolved problem in many areas of physics. This fact is exacerbated by the scarcity of experimental tools for characterizing complex transient states. We employ measurements of full quantum mechanical probability distributions of matter-wave interference to study the relaxation dynamics of a coherently split one-dimensional Bose gas and obtain unprecedented information about the dynamical states of the system. Following an initial rapid evolution, the full distributions reveal the approach towards a thermal-like steady state which exhibits an effective temperature eight times lower than the initial equilibrium temperature of the system as well as a strong memory of the initial state prepared by the splitting process. We associate this thermal-like state with pre-thermalization.
The European Physical Journal Special Topics, 2013
We experimentally study the relaxation dynamics of a coherently split one-dimensional Bose gas us... more We experimentally study the relaxation dynamics of a coherently split one-dimensional Bose gas using matterwave interference. Measuring the full probability distributions of interference contrast reveals the prethermalization of the system to a non-thermal steady state. To describe the evolution of noise and correlations we develop a semiclassical effective description that allows us to model the dynamics as a stochastic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process.
ABSTRACT Understanding relaxation processes is an important unsolved problem in many areas of phy... more ABSTRACT Understanding relaxation processes is an important unsolved problem in many areas of physics. This fact is exacerbated by the scarcity of experimental tools for characterizing complex transient states. We employ measurements of full quantum mechanical probability distributions of matter-wave interference to study the relaxation dynamics of a coherently split one-dimensional Bose gas and obtain unprecedented information about the dynamical states of the system. Following an initial rapid evolution, the full distributions reveal the approach towards a thermal-like steady state which exhibits an effective temperature eight times lower than the initial equilibrium temperature of the system as well as a strong memory of the initial state prepared by the splitting process. We associate this thermal-like state with pre-thermalization.
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Papers by M. Kuhnert