Quantum fields far from equilibrium: a quantitative approach

by Gert Aarts (Heidelberg)

Thursday 9 Aug 2001, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Auditorium (CERN)

Understanding the dynamical evolution of nonequilibrium quantum fields is important for heavy-ion collisions as well as for the early universe. I'll discuss a recently proposed method for the O(N) model, using the 2PI effective action at next-to-leading order in 1/N. Among other things, I'll show that the 1/N expansion gives quantitatively precise results already for moderate values of N and that for sufficiently high initial occupation numbers the time evolution of quantum fields is described accurately by classical physics.