22 February 2022 Tue 5 pm

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Thermalization describes the process how isolated many-body systems approach a state of thermal equilibrium. It forms the basis of statistical physics and allows us to understand, for example, different equilibrium phases of matter via spontaneous symmetry breaking. In recent years it has been realised that many-body systems subject to a high-frequency drive may also show intriguing thermalisation behaviour. Prior to the driving-induced heating to a featureless infinite temperature state they can spend an exponentially long time in a prethermal regime, in which novel phases of matter with no equilibrium counterpart may appear. In this colloquium I will review recent progress in the field of prethermal phases of matter introducing examples ranging from slow heating in aperiodically driven quantum matter to higher order and even fractional time crystals in classical magnets.

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