29 research outputs found
Universal energy fluctuations in thermally isolated driven systems
When an isolated system is brought in contact with a heat bath its final
energy is random and follows the Gibbs distribution -- a cornerstone of
statistical physics. The system's energy can also be changed by performing
non-adiabatic work using a cyclic process. Almost nothing is known about the
resulting energy distribution in this setup, which is especially relevant to
recent experimental progress in cold atoms, ions traps, superconducting qubits
and other systems. Here we show that when the non-adiabatic process comprises
of many repeated cyclic processes the resulting energy distribution is
universal and different from the Gibbs ensemble. We predict the existence of
two qualitatively different regimes with a continuous second order like
transition between them. We illustrate our approach performing explicit
calculations for both interacting and non-interacting systems