Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 217, 43-53 (2013)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2013-01752-0

Regular Article

Prethermalization in one-dimensional Bose gases: Description by a stochastic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process

¹ Vienna Center For Quantum Science and Technology, Atominstitut, TU Wien, Stadionallee 2, 1020 Wien, Austria
² Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia

^a e-mail: schmiedmayer@atomchip.org

Received: 10 September 2012
Revised: 15 January 2013
Published online: 11 March 2013

Abstract

We experimentally study the relaxation dynamics of a coherently split one-dimensional Bose gas using matterwave interference. Measuring the full probability distributions of interference contrast reveals the prethermalization of the system to a non-thermal steady state. To describe the evolution of noise and correlations we develop a semiclassical effective description that allows us to model the dynamics as a stochastic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process.