Title: Universal equilibrium scaling functions at short times after a quench,
Abstract: By analyzing spin-spin correlation functions at relatively short distances,
we show that equilibrium near-critical properties can be extracted at short
times after quenches into the vicinity of a quantum critical point. The time
scales after which equilibrium properties can be extracted are sufficiently
short so that the proposed scheme should be viable for quantum simulators of
spin models based on ultracold atoms or trapped ions. Our results, analytic as
well as numeric, are for one-dimensional spin models, either integrable or
nonintegrable, but we expect our conclusions to be valid in higher dimensions
as well.