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
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.
© EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag, 2013