Prethermalization Revealed by the Relaxation Dynamics of Full   Distribution Functions
  We detail the experimental observation of the non-equilibrium many-body phenomenon prethermalization. We study the dynamics of a rapidly and coherently split one-dimensional Bose gas. An analysis based on the use of full quantum mechanical probability distributions of matter wave interference contrast reveals that the system evolves towards a quasi-steady state. This state, which can be characterized by an effective temperature, is not the final thermal equilibrium state. We compare the evolution of the system to an integrable Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid model and show that the system dephases to a prethermalized state rather than undergoing thermalization towards a final thermal equilibrium state. 
David Adu Smith, Michael Gring, Tim Langen, Maximilian Kuhnert,   Bernhard Rauer, Remi Geiger, Takuya Kitagawa, Igor Mazets,...
cond-mat.quant-gas cond-mat.stat-mech hep-ph