On conservation laws, relaxation and pre-relaxation after a quantum quench

We consider the time evolution following a quantum quench in spin-1/2 chains. It is well known that local conservation laws constrain the dynamics and, eventually, the stationary behavior of local observables. We show that some widely studied models, such as the quantum XY model, possess extra families of local conservation laws in addition to the translation invariant ones. As a consequence, the additional charges must be included in the generalized Gibbs ensemble that describes the stationary properties. The effects go well beyond a simple redefinition of the stationary state. The time evolution of a non-translation-invariant state under a (translation-invariant) Hamiltonian with a perturbation that weakly breaks the hidden symmetries underlying the extra conservation laws exhibits pre-relaxation. In addition, in the limit of small perturbation, the time evolution following pre-relaxation can be described by means of a time-dependent generalized Gibbs ensemble. (paper)