Complex quantum dynamics

Enormous advances in experimental techniques during the past two decades, like the development of quantum simulators of different kinds and ultrafast pump-probe techniques, allow unprecedented control and time-resolved observations of quantum systems with many interacting degrees of freedom. These developments turned the spotlight on a number of open theoretical questions: Under which conditions and in what sense will a closed system approach a thermal state when prepared far from equilibrium initially? How can the dynamics be characterized on a macroscopic level and what are characteristic time scales? Is there a notion of phases beyond the equilibrium paradigm?