Defect formation beyond Kibble-Zurek mechanism and holography

Abstract

We study the dynamic after a smooth quench across a continuous transition from the disordered phase to the ordered phase. Based on scaling ideas, linear response and the spectrum of unstable modes, we develop a theoretical framework, valid for any second order phase transition, for the early-time evolution of the condensate in the broken phase. Our analysis unveils a novel period of non-adiabatic evolution after the system passes through the phase transition, where a parametrically large amount of coarsening occurs before a well-defined condensate forms. Our formalism predicts a rate of defect formation parametrically smaller than the Kibble-Zurek prediction and yields a criterion for the break-down of Kibble-Zurek scaling for sufficiently fast quenches. We numerically test our formalism for a thermal quench in a 2 + 1 dimensional holographic superfluid. These findings, of direct relevance in a broad range of fields including cold atom, condensed matter, statistical mechanism and cosmology, are an important step towards a more quantitative understanding of dynamical phase transitions.

24 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Universal far-from-equilibrium Dynamics of a Holographic Superconductor
• Exploring the Kibble-Zurek mechanism with homogeneous Bose gases
• Dynamics of a quantum phase transition in the 1D Bose-Hubbard model: excitations and correlations induced by a quench
• Holographic Thermalization and Generalized Vaidya-AdS Solutions in Massive Gravity
• Quantum Kibble-Zurek mechanism: Kink correlations after a quench in the quantum Ising chain
• Universal Early Coarsening of Quenched Bose Gases
• Tensor network simulation of the quantum Kibble-Zurek quench from the Mott to superfluid phase in the two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model
• Light sterile neutrinos from a late phase transition
• Apparent delay of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in quenched open systems
• Separation of the Kibble-Zurek Mechanism from Quantum Criticality
• Entanglement generation and scaling from noisy quenches across a quantum critical point
• Optimized adiabatic-impulse protocol preserving Kibble-Zurek scaling with attenuated anti-Kibble-Zurek behavior
• Spontaneous Quantum Turbulence in a Newborn Bose-Einstein Condensate via the Kibble-Zurek Mechanism