Non-thermal fixed points: effective weak-coupling for strongly correlated systems far from equilibrium

摘要

Strongly correlated systems far from equilibrium can exhibit scalingsolutions with a dynamically generated weak coupling. We show this byinvestigating isolated systems described by relativistic quantum field theoriesfor initial conditions leading to nonequilibrium instabilities, such asparametric resonance or spinodal decomposition. The non-thermal fixed pointsprevent fast thermalization if classical-statistical fluctuations dominate overquantum fluctuations. We comment on the possible significance of these resultsfor the heating of the early universe after inflation and the question of fastthermalization in heavy-ion collision experiments.