Quenched dynamics of classical isolated systems: the spherical spin model with two-body random interactions or the Neumann integrable model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the spherical spin model with two-body interactions, revealing multiple dynamical phases, the role of integrals of motion, and conditions under which the system approaches or deviates from thermal equilibrium.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the quenched dynamics of the spherical spin model, connecting classical integrable systems with out-of-equilibrium statistical physics and exploring the applicability of generalized Gibbs ensembles.

Findings

Identification of three dynamical phases post-quench.

Most cases show out-of-equilibrium behavior of global observables.

Certain parameter relations lead to near-Gibbs-Boltzmann equilibrium.

Abstract

We study the Hamiltonian dynamics of the spherical spin model with fully-connected two-body interactions drawn from a Gaussian probability distribution. In the statistical physics framework, the potential energy is of the so-called $p=2$ spherical disordered kind. Most importantly for our setting, the energy conserving dynamics are equivalent to the ones of the Neumann integrable system. We take initial conditions in thermal equilibrium and we subsequently evolve the configurations with Newton dynamics dictated by a different Hamiltonian. We identify three dynamical phases depending on the parameters that characterise the initial state and the final Hamiltonian. We obtain the {\it global} dynamical observables with numerical and analytic methods and we show that, in most cases, they are out of thermal equilibrium. We note, however, that for shallow quenches from the condensed phase the dynamics are close to (though not at) thermal equilibrium. Surprisingly enough, for a particular relation between parameters the global observables comply Gibbs-Boltzmann equilibrium. We next set the analysis of the system with finite number of degrees of freedom in terms of $N$ non-linearly coupled modes. We evaluate the mode temperatures and we relate them to the frequency-dependent effective temperature measured with the fluctuation-dissipation relation in the frequency domain, similarly to what was recently proposed for quantum integrable cases. Finally, we analyse the $N-1$ integrals of motion and we use them to show that the system is out of equilibrium in all phases, even for parameters that show an apparent Gibbs-Boltzmann behaviour of global observables. We elaborate on the role played by these constants of motion in the post-quench dynamics and we briefly discuss the possible description of the asymptotic dynamics in terms of a Generalised Gibbs Ensemble.