Thermalization timescales in a 1d Hubbard model with slightly broken integrability

Understanding relaxation in quantum systems is essential to determine whether an experimental setup can be described by equilibrium concepts. For example integrable systems do not thermalize, but develop into non-thermal steady states. By slightly breaking integrability, thermalization of such non-thermal (prethermalized) states becomes possible. An important question is to identify the corresponding timescale for thermalization due to the breaking of integrability. We investigate this question for a fermionic Hubbard chain. The integrability breaking term is a small next to nearest neighbor hopping term [1,2]. The thermalization timescale is extracted from the quantum Boltzmann equation and depends strongly on temperature.\\[4pt] [1] M. L. R. F\"urst et al., Phys. Rev. E 86, 031122 (2012).\\[0pt] [2] M. L. R. F\"urst et al., Phys. Rev. E 88, 012108 (2013).