Emergent Pauli blocking in a one-dimensional Bose gas

Abstract

The relationship between many-body interactions and dimensionality is integral to numerous emergent quantum phenomena. A striking example is the Bose gas, which upon confinement to one dimension (1D) obeys an infinite set of conservation laws, prohibiting thermalization and constraining dynamics. In our experiment, we demonstrate that such a 1D behavior can extend much further into the dimensional crossover toward 3D than expected. Starting from a weakly interacting Bose gas trapped in a highly elongated potential, we perform a quench to instigate the dynamics of a single density mode. Employing the theory of generalized hydrodynamics, we identify the dominant relaxation mechanism as the 1D dephasing of the relevant collective excitations of the system, the rapidities. Surprisingly, the dephasing remains dominant even for temperatures far exceeding conventional limits of one dimensionality where thermalization should occur. We attribute our observations to an emergent Pauli blocking of transverse excitations caused by the rapidities assuming fermionic statistics, despite the gas being purely bosonic.