Equilibration of a Tonks-Girardeau gas following a trap release

Abstract

We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of a Tonks-Girardeau gas released from a parabolic trap to a circle. We present the exact analytic solution of the many body dynamics and prove that, for large times and in a properly defined thermodynamic limit, the reduced density matrix of any finite subsystem converges to a generalized Gibbs ensemble. The equilibration mechanism is expected to be the same for all one-dimensional systems.