The fate of quantum shock waves at late times

Abstract

Shock waves are an ubiquitous feature of hydrodynamic theories. Given that fermionic quantum many-body systems admit hydrodynamical descriptions on length scales large compared to the Fermi wavelength, it is natural to ask what the status of shock waves is in such systems. Free fermions provide a solvable yet non-trivial example, and here we generalise to include generic (non-integrable) weak interactions to understand how a shock wave decays and changes its shape well after forming.