FINESS 2011: Aims and topics of the workshop

Ultracold atomic gases are, in a growing number of experiments, driven in a controlled way out of thermal equilibrium and allow new exciting insight into the dynamics of many-body quantum systems. At the same time increasing interest arises in mutual exchange with other areas such as solid-state and high-energy physics. Following successful conferences held in Sandbjerg, Denmark in 2007 and in Durham, UK in 2009, the aim of the workshop is to bring together international experts on nonequilibrium time evolution, transport in strongly correlated hydrodynamic systems as well as transport and quantum dynamics in low-dimensional and lattice systems. The workshop will take place at the Internationales Wissenschaftsforum Heidelberg, situated in the old town of Heidelberg at the foot of the castle hill, from 18. to 21. September 2011.

The focus of the FINESS workshops has been set on a range of different approaches to the description of nonequilibrium superfluid gases at finite temperature, including superfluid hydrodynamics, kinetic equations, classical and semi-classical field theory, phase-space methods, dynamical mean-field theory, Kadanoff-Baym equations, functional-integral approaches, density-matrix RG methods, exact solutions, etc. Applications of these methods were discussed, ranging from cold, trapped atomic and composite gases to solid-state systems that can be treated in a formally similar way.

The aim of the forthcoming workshop is to pass on and further develop the tradition sketched above by discussing established and new key questions concerning the dynamics of superfluids at finite temperature, focusing on the methods for approaching these and comparing them. Applications discussed will mainly be in ultracold atomic gases while connections shall be drawn with a few closely related phenomena outside.

Topical areas of the workshop will include quantum transport and hydrodynamics in strongly interacting systems, superfluid systems far from equilibrium, also in comparison to near-equilibrium dynamics, two-fluid hydrodynamics, effects of the dimensionality on the non-equilibrium evolution, as well as implications of the internal structure of the atoms. All of these topics are highly relevant for a range of longstanding as well as newly arising questions, including nearly perfect fluids and fundamental bounds on transport coefficients, critical dynamics far from equilibrium, and questions related to spin in transport phenomena.