0000000000811855
AUTHOR
Jürgen Berges
Attractive versus repulsive interactions in the Bose-Einstein condensation dynamics of relativistic field theories
We study the impact of attractive self-interactions on the nonequilibrium dynamics of relativistic quantum fields with large occupancies at low momenta. Our primary focus is on Bose-Einstein condensation and nonthermal fixed points in such systems. As a model system we consider O(N)-symmetric scalar field theories. We use classical-statistical real-time simulations, as well as a systematic 1/N expansion of the quantum (2PI) effective action to next-to-leading order. When the mean self-interactions are repulsive, condensation occurs as a consequence of a universal inverse particle cascade to the zero-momentum mode with self-similar scaling behavior. For attractive mean self-interactions the …
Large-N kinetic theory for highly occupied systems
We consider an effective kinetic description for quantum many-body systems, which is not based on a weak-coupling or diluteness expansion. Instead, it employs an expansion in the number of field components N of the underlying scalar quantum field theory. Extending previous studies, we demonstrate that the large-N kinetic theory at next-to-leading order is able to describe important aspects of highly occupied systems, which are beyond standard perturbative kinetic approaches. We analyze the underlying quasiparticle dynamics by computing the effective scattering matrix elements analytically and solve numerically the large-N kinetic equation for a highly occupied system far from equilibrium. T…