Ergodic systems lie at the heart of statistical physics since they reach thermal equilibrium and 'forget' their initial conditions, thereby allowing for coarse-grained classical descriptions. Recently, non-ergodic quantum many-body systems, which fail to thermalise and decohere completely, came into focus. This interdisciplinary meeting addressed their fundamental challenges and experimental realisations, including many-body localisation and other novel, non-classical long-time behaviour.
The programme, speaker abstracts, and biographies of the organisers and speakers is available below. Recorded audio of the talks are also available below. Meeting papers will be published in a future version of Philosophical Transaction A.
This meeting was followed by a related satellite meeting 'Future directions in non-ergodic dynamics in quantum systems' at the Royal Society at Chicheley Hall on 8-9 February 2017.
Enquiries: Contact the Scientific Programmes team