Adiabatic Hydrodynamization and Quasinormal Modes of Nonthermal Attractors
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 082303 – Published 21 August, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/262r-xh1p
Abstract
Nonthermal attractors govern the emergent self-similar dynamics of far-from-equilibrium quantum systems, from ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions to cold-atom experiments. Within the framework of adiabatic hydrodynamization, the approach to a nonthermal attractor is described by the decay of excited states of an effective Hamiltonian. Using an exactly solvable kinetic theory—the longitudinally expanding, overoccupied gluon plasma dominated by small-angle elastic scattering—we establish a direct correspondence between the eigenmodes of adiabatic hydrodynamization and the quasinormal mode spectrum of the nonthermal attractor. This equivalence suggests a general framework for identifying universal dynamical structures in nonequilibrium systems. As a byproduct, we derive analytic prescaling solutions for strongly longitudinally expanding systems.
