Katarzyna Macieszczak
Metastability is a phenomenon of a large separation present in the timescales of the dynamics of an open quantum system. This leads to the existence of a time regime in which system states appear to be stationary before their eventual relaxation towards a true stationary state. In this talk, I will characterise classical metastability in an open quantum system, which corresponds to the existence of distinct metastable phases. I will explain how such phases manifest themselves in experiments and how they can be found in numerical situations. I will also discuss how classical metastability allows for breaking of discrete symmetries of the dynamics. While metastability is an intrinsically dynamical phenomenon, it is always present in proximity to static first-order phase transitions. Therefore, the presented results can be used to investigate such transitions, which typically occur in the large size limit, through the inherited metastable behaviour at moderate sizes accessible to numerics.