Timescales and necessary conditions for hydrodynamization in one-dimensional Bose gases

Abstract

We study the quantum evolution of one-dimensional Bose gases immediately after several variants of high-energy quenches, both theoretically and experimentally. Using the advantages conveyed by the relative simplicity of these nearly integrable many-body systems, we are able to differentiate the behaviors of two distinct but often temporally overlapping processes, hydrodynamization and local prethermalization. We show that the hydrodynamization epoch is itself characterized by two independent timescales, an oscillation period and an observable-dependent damping time. We also show how the existence of a hydrodynamization epoch depends on the exact nature of the high-energy quench. There is a universal character to our findings, which can be applied to the short-time behavior of any interacting many-body quantum system after a sudden high-energy quench. We specifically discuss its potential relevance to heavy-ion collisions.