Speaker
Richard Davison
(Harvard)
Description
In many-body quantum systems with strong interactions, the
timescale governing transport is typically expected to be
short and set by the inverse temperature. For example, in
many holographic quantum critical phases of matter the
thermal diffusivity (in appropriate units) is set by the
inverse temperature. However, there are a simple class of
such phases where this is not the case. I will discuss these
phases and show that they have a collective excitation whose
lifetime is parametrically longer than the inverse
temperature. The lifetime of this excitation is enhanced due
to its sensitivity to an irrelevant deformation, and I will
show that it is this lifetime which ultimately governs the
thermal diffusivity in these phases.
