Dynamical Thermalization of Interacting Fermionic Atoms in a Sinai Oscillator Trap

Abstract

We study numerically the problem of dynamical thermalization of interacting cold fermionic atoms placed in an isolated Sinai oscillator trap. This system is characterized by a quantum chaos regime for one-particle dynamics. We show that, for a many-body system of cold atoms, the interactions, with a strength above a certain quantum chaos border given by the Åberg criterion, lead to the Fermi−Dirac distribution and relaxation of many-body initial states to the thermalized state in the absence of any contact with a thermostate. We discuss the properties of this dynamical thermalization and its links with the Loschmidt−Boltzmann dispute.

Keywords

• quantum chaos
• cold atoms
• interacting fermions
• thermalization
• dynamical chaos
• Sinai oscillator