Non-equlibrium quantum systems have recently come to the fore in theoretical physics, mainly due to the rapid development of experimental techniques. The interest is partly motivated by fundamental theoretical problems: what are the conditions for a closed non-equilibrium quantum system to evolve towards an equilibrium, and what is the nature of an eventual equilibrium state? Another reason is that a large number of exotic quantum phenomena, hitherto only predicted or known theoretically, have been realised in the lab, which allows for directly comparing the models to physics reality. In this lecture I present a new result, which on the one hand points to a surprising phenomenon in the framework of an especially simple model. On the other hand it turned out that the findings are explained in terms of a statistical physics analogue of quark confinement known from the theory of strong interactions.

* Gábor Takács, Department of Theoretical Physics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics