Quasi-Normal Modes and thermalization in integrable Quantum Field Theories from the Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz

Abstract

We propose a Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz (TBA) approach for describing thermalization in integrable quantum field theories. The exponential damping and oscillations when approaching thermal equilibrium can be understood as the analogs of quasi-normal mode (QNM) frequencies of black hole perturbations within the framework of holography. Holographic intuitions and some general properties of thermal Green's functions motivate the existence of such a TBA formulation, as well as lead to the imposition of a nonstandard analytical structure on the QNM TBA, while comparison with integrable form-factor expansions fixes the remaining ingredients. We conjecture the QNM TBA to be equivalent to performing an all-order resummation of secular terms in a thermal form factor expansion of retarded 2-point correlation functions. We compare the predictions with tensor network simulations of the E8 deformation of Ising CFT at nonzero temperature. We conjecture that the QNM TBA framework should also be applicable for describing out-of-equilibrium approach to Generalized Hydrodynamics (GHD).