Aspects of non-equilibrium in classical and quantum systems: slow relaxation and glasses, dynamical large deviations, quantum non-ergodicity, and open quantum dynamics

TL;DR

This series of lectures explores slow relaxation, non-equilibrium phenomena, and dynamical phase structures in classical and quantum systems, highlighting recent theoretical methods and their connections across different physical contexts.

Contribution

It provides a unified overview of classical and quantum non-equilibrium dynamics, emphasizing large deviation techniques and the analogy between classical glasses and quantum non-ergodicity.

Findings

Classical glasses modeled via kinetically constrained dynamics.

Large deviation methods reveal dynamical phase structures.

Quantum non-ergodicity and slow thermalisation discussed.

Abstract

In these four lectures I describe basic ideas and methods applicable to both classical and quantum systems displaying slow relaxation and non-equilibrium dynamics. The first half of these notes considers classical systems, and the second half, quantum systems. In Lecture 1, I briefly review the glass transition problem as a paradigm of slow relaxation and dynamical arrest in classical many-body systems. I discuss theoretical perspectives on how to think about glasses, and in particular how to model them in terms of kinetically constrained dynamics. In Lecture 2, I describe how via large deviation methods it is possible to define a statistical mechanics of trajectories which reveals the dynamical phase structure of systems with complex relaxation such as glasses. Lecture 3 is about closed (i.e. isolated) many-body quantum systems. I review thermalisation and many-body localisation, and consider the possibility of slow thermalisation and quantum non-ergodicity in the absence of disorder, thus connecting with some of the ideas of the first lecture. Lecture 4 is about open quantum systems, that is, quantum systems interacting with an environment. I review the description of open quantum dynamics within the Markovian approximation in terms of quantum master equations and stochastic quantum trajectories, and explain how to extend the dynamical large deviation method to study the statistical properties of ensembles of quantum jump trajectories. My overall aim is to draw analogies between classical and quantum non-equilibrium and find connections in the way we think about problems in these areas.