Hydrodynamization in 1D Bose gases at nonzero temperature

Abstract

Hydrodynamization refers to the remarkably rapid process in relativistic heavy-ion collisions by which hydrodynamic descriptions become applicable. Following the observation of analogous behavior in ultracold one-dimensional (1D) Bose gases, hydrodynamization has been conjectured to be a universal dynamical phenomenon in quantum systems following high-energy quenches. Theoretical studies in this cold-atom setting have so far been restricted to quenches from ground states. Here we study how nonzero temperatures affect hydrodynamization. Specifically, using a homogeneous 1D gas of hard-core bosons, we explore how the initial temperature affects the timescales associated with hydrodynamization and prethermalization following a Bragg-pulse quench. We find that while the hydrodynamization coherence time remains unchanged, increasing temperature shortens both the damping time of the hydrodynamization oscillations and the prethermalization time. We argue that this is mainly the result of the broadening of the initial rapidity distribution, and introduce a nonzero-temperature dephasing time defined in terms of the extent of the rapidity distribution.