Prethermalization in one-dimensional Bose gases: description by a stochastic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process

TL;DR

This paper investigates the relaxation dynamics of a one-dimensional Bose gas, demonstrating prethermalization to a non-thermal state and modeling the process with a stochastic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck approach.

Contribution

It introduces a semiclassical effective model using a stochastic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process to describe prethermalization in 1D Bose gases.

Findings

Observation of prethermalization to a non-thermal steady state

Full probability distributions of interference contrast measured

Development of a stochastic model matching experimental dynamics

Abstract

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.