Critical dynamics of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a homogeneous Bose gas

Kibble-Zurek theory models the dynamics of spontaneous symmetry breaking, which plays an important role in a wide variety of physical contexts, ranging from cosmology to superconductors. We explored these dynamics in a homogeneous system by thermally quenching an atomic gas with short-range interact...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2015-01, Vol.347 (6218), p.167-170
Main Authors: Navon, Nir, Gaunt, Alexander L., Smith, Robert P., Hadzibabic, Zoran
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Breaking
Broken symmetry
Cooling
Cooling systems
Dynamical systems
Dynamics
Gases
Mathematical models
Spontaneous
Symmetry
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Summary:Kibble-Zurek theory models the dynamics of spontaneous symmetry breaking, which plays an important role in a wide variety of physical contexts, ranging from cosmology to superconductors. We explored these dynamics in a homogeneous system by thermally quenching an atomic gas with short-range interactions through the Bose-Einstein phase transition. Using homodyne matter-wave interferometry to measure first-order correlation functions, we verified the central quantitative prediction of the Kibble-Zurek theory, namely the homogeneous-system power-law scaling of the coherence length with the quench rate. Moreover, we directly confirmed its underlying hypothesis, the freezing of the correlation length near the transition. Our measurements agree with a beyond-mean-field theory and support the expectation that the dynamical critical exponent for this universality class is z = 3/2.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1258676