David A. Huse
Princeton University
October 15, 2013
An isolated quantum many-body system may be a reservoir that thermalizes its constituents. I will explore an example of the interplay of this thermalization and spontaneous symmetry-breaking, in the ferromagnetic phase of an infinite-range quantum Ising model. For a system of N spins, the barrier that must be crossed to flip the magnetization is of order N. The unitary quantum dynamics of this system can cross this barrier either by thermally activating
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