Paper detail

Quenches and (Pre)Thermalisation in a mixed Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev Model

We study the nonequilibrium quench dynamics of a mixed Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, with competing two bodies random interactions leading to maximally chaotic Non-Fermi Liquid dynamics and a single body term which dominates at low temperatures and leads to Fermi liquid behavior. For different quench protocols, including sudden switching of two-body interaction and double quench protocols, we solve the large $N$ real-time Dyson equation on the Keldysh contour and compute the dynamics of Green's functions from which we obtain effective temperature and relaxation rates. We show that the model thermalizes to a finite temperature equilibrium and that depending on the value of the quench parameters the effective temperature can be below or above the Fermi-Liquid to Non-Fermi Liquid crossover scale, which can then be accessed through the nonequilibrium dynamics. We identify quench protocols for which the heating dynamics slow down significantly, an effect that we interpret as a signature of prethermalization.