Vojkan Jaksic - Politecnico di Milano
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Zoom opens: 10:30AM EST
Seminar begins: 10:45AM EST
Remarks on Approach to Equilibrium in Quantum Spin Systems
The Zeroth (or “minus First”) law of thermodynamics asserts that large systems, when left alone and under normal conditions, rapidly approach equilibrium states characterized by a small number of macroscopic parameters such as temperature and density. In this talk, I will describe recent results on structural aspects of this law in the context of infinitely extended, translation-invariant quantum spin systems.
The main conclusion is that a minimal restoration of locality in the large-time limit is sufficient to enforce approach to equilibrium. This conclusion relies on a number of plausible conjectures concerning finite-time thermodynamic formalism, for which partial results will also be discussed. Key concepts include equilibrium steady states, weak Gibbsianity, entropy and energy conservation laws, constants of motion, and a dynamical Gibbs variational principle.