Emergent Thermodynamics in a Quenched Quantum Many-Body System

Abstract

We study the statistics of the work done, fluctuation relations, and irreversible entropy production in a quantum many-body system subject to the sudden quench of a control parameter. By treating the quench as a thermodynamic transformation we show that the emergence of irreversibility in the nonequilibrium dynamics of closed many-body quantum systems can be accurately characterized. We demonstrate our ideas by considering a transverse quantum Ising model that is taken out of equilibrium by an instantaneous change of the transverse field. © 2012 American Physical Society.