Quantum Thermalization and Hydrodynamization in Strongly Interacting Systems

by 舒哲 施 (清华大学)

Thursday 8 May 2025, 15:10 → 16:10 Asia/Shanghai

B105 (CHEP)

Over decades of theoretical and experimental studies in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, evidence has shown the creation of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP)—a color-deconfined state of matter. A key signature of QGP formation is the successful application of hydrodynamic theory in describing the final-state particle distributions and correlations. Understanding the onset of hydrodynamics in this hot, dense medium—particularly its surprisingly early applicability—remains a critical open question in theory.

A first-principles approach to this problem requires real-time, non-perturbative simulations of the quantum many-body system. In this work, we employ quantum simulations to investigate the emergence of thermal equilibrium and hydrodynamic behavior. We focus on the massive Schwinger model, a lower-dimensional analog of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), as it shares essential features such as confinement and chiral symmetry breaking. By analyzing the real-time evolution of the energy-momentum tensor and the Wigner function—the Wigner-Weyl transform of the gauge-invariant two-point correlation function—we study thermalization dynamics. The Wigner function, serving as a quantum counterpart to the classical phase-space quark distribution, provides key insights into the system’s equilibration process.
 

Bio:
Shuzhe Shi is currently an Assistant Professor at Department of Physics, Tsinghua University. He obtained his bachelor(2012) and master(2015) degrees from Tsinghua under the supervision of Prof. Pengfei Zhuang. Then he received the Ph.D.(2018) from Indiana Univ., Bloomington, supervised by Prof. Jinfeng Liao. After that, he became PostDoc researchers at McGill Univ.(2021) and Stony Brook Univ.(2023). His research focus on novel transport phenomena in heavy ion collisions, as well as applying machine learning and quantum computation methods in nuclear physics.