Scaling Laws for Fluxon Formation in Annular Josephson Tunnel Junctions

Abstract

It has been argued by Zurek and Kibble that the likelihood of producing defects in a continuous phase transition depends in a characteristic way on the quench rate. In this paper we discuss our experiment for measuring the Zurek-Kibble scaling exponent $\sigma$ for the production of fluxons in annular symmetric Josephson Tunnel Junctions. The predicted exponent is , and we find $\sigma =0.27\pm 0.05$. Further, there is agreement with the ZK prediction for the overall normalisation.

10 pages, 5 figures: To be published in Patterns of Symmetry Breaking (Ed. Jacek Dziarmaga), Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute & COSLAB School, Krakow, Poland (September 2002) Proceedings of The Nato Advanced Study Institute and COSLAB School, September 2002, Krakow, Poland