A Bound on Thermalization from Diffusive Fluctuations

The local equilibration time of quantum many-body systems has been conjectured to satisfy a `Planckian bound', $\tau_{\rm eq}\gtrsim \frac{\hbar}{T}$. We provide a sharp and universal definition of this time scale, and show that it is bounded below by the strong coupling scale of diffusive fluctuations, which can be expressed in terms of familiar transport parameters. When applied to quantum field theories at finite temperature, this fluctuation bound implies the Planckian bound. The fluctuation bound moreover applies to any local thermalizing system, and we study its implication for correlated insulators, metals, as well as disordered fixed points, where it can be used to establish a lower bound on the diffusivity in terms of the specific heat $D\gtrsim 1/(c_V^{2/d}\tau_{\rm eq})$. Finally, we discuss how the local equilibration time can be directly measured in experiments.