We consider 1D integrable systems supporting ballistic propagation of excitations, perturbed by a localised defect that breaks most conservation laws and induces chaotic dynamics. Focusing on classical systems, we study an out-of-equilibrium protocol engineered activating the defect in an initially homogeneous and far from the equilibrium state. We find that large enough defects induce full thermalisation at their center, but nonetheless the outgoing flow of carriers emerging from the defect is non-thermal due to a generalization of the celebrated Boundary Thermal Resistance effect, occurring at the edges of the chaotic region. Our results are obtained combining ab-initio numerical simulations for relatively small-sized defects, with the solution of the Boltzmann equation, which becomes exact in the scaling limit of large, but weak defects.

We study the out-of-equilibrium properties of a classical integrable non-relativistic theory, with a time evolution initially prepared with a finite energy density in the thermodynamic limit. The theory considered here is the Non-Linear Schrödinger equation which describes the dynamics of the one-dimensional interacting Bose gas in the regime of high occupation numbers. The main emphasis is on the determination of the late-time Generalised Gibbs Ensemble (GGE), which can be efficiently semi-numerically computed on arbitrary initial states, completely solving the famous quench problem in the classical regime. We take advantage of known results in the quantum model and the semiclassical limit to achieve new exact results for the momenta of the density operator on arbitrary GGEs, which we successfully compare with ab-initio numerical simulations. Furthermore, we determine the whole probability distribution of the density operator (full counting statistics), whose exact expression is still out of reach in the quantum model.

The large-scale behaviour of entanglement entropy in finite-density states, in and out of equilibrium, can be understood using the physical picture of particle pairs. However, the full theoretical origin of this picture is not fully established yet. In this work, we clarify this picture by investigating entanglement entropy using its connection with the large-deviation theory for thermodynamic and hydrodynamic fluctuations. We apply the universal framework of Ballistic Fluctuation Theory (BFT), based the Euler hydrodynamics of the model, to correlation functions of branch-point twist fields, the starting point for computing Rényi entanglement entropies within the replica approach. Focusing on free fermionic systems in order to illustrate the ideas, we show that both the equilibrium behavior and the dynamics of Rényi entanglement entropies can be fully derived from the BFT. In particular, we emphasise that long-range correlations develop after quantum quenches, and accounting for these explain the structure of the entanglement growth. We further show that this growth is related to fluctuations of charge transport, generalising to quantum quenches the relation between charge fluctuations and entanglement observed earlier. The general ideas we introduce suggest that the large-scale behaviour of entanglement has its origin within hydrodynamic fluctuations.

By the hydrodynamic linear response theory, dynamical correlation functions decay as power laws along certain velocities, determined by the flux Jacobian. Such correlations are obtained by hydrodynamic projections, and physically, they are due to propagating ‘sound waves’ or generalisation thereof, transporting conserved quantities between the observables. However, some observables do not emit sound waves, such as order parameters associated to symmetry breaking. In these cases correlation functions decay exponentially everywhere, a behaviour not captured by the hydrodynamic linear response theory. Focussing on spin–spin correlation functions in the XX quantum chain, we first review how hydrodynamic linear response works, emphasising that the necessary fluid cell averaging washes out oscillatory effects. We then show how, beyond linear response, Euler hydrodynamics can still predict the exponential decay of correlation functions of order parameters. This is done by accounting for the large-scale fluctuations of domain walls, via the recently developed ballistic fluctuation theory. We use the framework of generalised hydrodynamics, which is particularly simple in this model due to its free fermion description. In particular, this reproduces, by elementary calculations, the exponential decay in the celebrated formulae by Its et al (1993) and by Jie (1998), which were originally obtained by intricate Fredholm determinant analysis; and gives a new formula in a parameter domain where no result was obtained before. We confirm the results by numerical simulations.