Kibble-Zurek mechanism in the self-organization of a cold atomic cloud

Abstract

When applying two counter-propagating laser beams to a cold cloud of Rubidium atoms, we observe the spontaneous formation of intensity patterns associated with a spatial structuration of the atomic spins. We study the average number of defects in these patterns as a function of the sweep time employed to cross the transition threshold. We observe a power-law decrease of the number of defects with increasing sweep time, typical of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. The measured exponent is consistent with the prediction for a supercritical bifurcation.

5 pages, 4 Figures

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• Quenched dynamics and pattern formation in clean and disordered Bogoliubov-de Gennes superconductors
• Dynamics of Topological Defects in a Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupled Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Finite-time scaling with two characteristic time scales: Driven critical dynamics with emergent symmetry