Laboratoire de Physique Théorique
Toulouse - UMR 5152

The "quantum quenches" term regroups the physics of isolated quantum systems a parameter of which is changed upon time. This general setup comprises both fundamental and practical questions which are currently of importance in the context of cold atoms experiments. In this seminar, I would like to discuss some of these issues by taking the example of the Bose-Hubbard model. In a first part, we shall study the sudden quench limit to illustrate the question of thermalization and the role of integrability. Recent results on a remarkable setup, the galileo ramp, display some typical features of this non-equilibrium physics. In a second part, we will address the adiabatic limit issue for homogeneous and trapped gases, underlining the importance of transport phenomena in the latter case.