Quantum quenches from an excited state

Abstract

Determining the role of initial conditions in the late time evolution is a key issue for the theory of nonequilibrium dynamics of isolated quantum systems. Here we extend the theory of quantum quenches to the case in which before the quench the system is in an excited state. In particular, we show perturbatively in the size of the quench (and for arbitrarily strong interactions among the quasiparticles) that persistent oscillations of one-point functions require the presence of a one-quasiparticle contribution to the nonequilibrium state, as originally shown in Delfino (2014) [5] for the quenches from the ground state. Also in the present case, we argue that the results generically have nonperturbative implications. Oscillations staying undamped within the accessible time interval, far beyond the perturbative time scale, are nowadays observed in numerical simulations.