Universality Far from Equilibrium: From Superfluid Bose Gases to Heavy-Ion Collisions

Abstract

Isolated quantum systems in extreme conditions can exhibit unusually large occupancies per mode. This overpopulation gives rise to new universality classes of many-body systems far from equilibrium. We present theoretical evidence that important aspects of non-Abelian plasmas in the ultrarelativistic limit admit a dual description in terms of a Bose condensed scalar field theory.