PIRSA:13110074

Quantum quenches & holography

Myers, R. (2013). Quantum quenches & holography. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/13110074

Myers, Robert. Quantum quenches & holography. Perimeter Institute, Nov. 07, 2013, https://pirsa.org/13110074 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:13110074,
            doi = {10.48660/13110074},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/13110074},
            author = {Myers, Robert},
            keywords = {},
            language = {en},
            title = {Quantum quenches \& holography},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2013},
            month = {nov},
            note = {PIRSA:13110074 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Robert Myers Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

DOI 10.48660/13110074
Collection
Talk Type Conference

Abstract

We employ holographic techniques to study quantum quenches at finite temperature, where the quenches involve varying the coupling of the boundary theory to a relevant operator with an arbitrary conformal dimension. The evolution of the system is studied by evaluating the expectation value of the quenched operator and the stress tensor throughout the process. The time dependence of the new coupling is characterized by a fixed timescale and the response of the observables depends on the ratio of the this timescale to the initial temperature. The observables exhibit universal scaling behaviours when the transitions are either fast or slow, i.e., when this ratio is very small or very large. For fast quenches, we uncover a universal scaling behaviour in the response of the system, which depends only on the conformal dimension of the quenched operator in the vicinity of the ultraviolet fixed point of the theory.