Applicability of kinetic theory in strongly coupled thermal quantum systems

Abstract

In this work, we construct one-dimensional interacting lattice spinor theories with discretization in momentum space. We focus on strongly interacting Schwinger and Nambu--Jona-Lasinio models and perform ab-initio calculation of their single-particle and two-particle momentum distribution functions at finite temperature. We observe, at low temperature, high-momentum tail in single-particle and two particle distribution which reveals relative momentum in fermion-antifermion boundstates, as well as quasi-free spinor gases behavior at high temperature. The non-vanishing connected four-momentum function reveals the quantum coherence in momentum space under thermal equilibrium of the system and indicate the single particle correlation would remember more microscopic details within a thermal system. Overall, for a high-enough temperature at which the thermal kinetic energy comparable with the interaction, we observe that the two-particle correlation is subdominant compared to the single particle distributions, which indicates the applicability of kinetic theory.