Emergence of hydrodynamic spatial long-range correlations in nonequilibrium many-body systems

Abstract

At large scales of space and time, the nonequilibrium dynamics of local observables in extensive many-body systems is well described by hydrodynamics. At the Euler scale, one assumes that each mesoscopic region independently reaches a state of maximal entropy under the constraints given by the available conservation laws. Away from phase transitions, maximal entropy states show exponential correlation decay, and independence of fluid cells might be assumed to subsist during the course of time evolution. We show that this picture is incorrect: under ballistic scaling, regions separated by macroscopic distances develop long-range correlations as time passes. These correlations take a universal form that only depends on the Euler hydrodynamics of the model. They are rooted in the large-scale motion of interacting fluid modes, and are the dominant long-range correlations developing in time from long-wavelength, entropy-maximised states. They require the presence of interaction and at least two different fluid modes, and are of a fundamentally different nature from well-known long-range correlations occurring from diffusive spreading or from quasi-particle excitations produced in far-from-equilibrium quenches. We provide a universal theoretical framework to exactly evaluate them, an adaptation of the macroscopic fluctuation theory to the Euler scale. We verify our exact predictions in the hard-rod gas, by comparing with numerical simulations and finding excellent agreement.