Paper detail

Persistent oscillations after quantum quenches: The inhomogeneous case

We previously showed that a quantum quench in a one-dimensional translation invariant system produces undamped oscillations of a local observable when the post-quench state includes a single-quasiparticle mode and the observable couples to that mode [J. Phys. A 47 (2014) 402001]. Here we consider quenches that break initial translation invariance. Focusing on quenches performed only on an interval of the whole system, we analytically determine the time evolution of local observables, which occurs inside a truncated light cone spreading away from the quenched interval as time increases. If the quench excites a single-quasiparticle mode, oscillations with the frequency of the quasiparticle mass stay undamped until a time increasing with the length of the quenched interval, before eventually decaying as $t^{-1/2}$. The translation invariant case with no damping is recovered as the length of the interval goes to infinity.