Critical dynamics and phase transition of a strongly interacting warm spin gas

Phase transitions are emergent phenomena where microscopic interactions drive a disordered system into a collectively ordered phase. Near the boundary between two phases, the system can exhibit critical, scale-invariant behavior. Here, we report on a second-order phase transition accompanied by crit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2021-10, Vol.118 (43), p.1-7
Main Authors: Horowicz, Yahel, Katz, Or, Raz, Oren, Firstenberg, Ofer
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cesium
Linear polarization
Magnetic properties
Magnetization
Phase boundaries
Phase diagrams
Phase transitions
Physical Sciences
Polarized light
Response time
Vapor phases
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Summary:Phase transitions are emergent phenomena where microscopic interactions drive a disordered system into a collectively ordered phase. Near the boundary between two phases, the system can exhibit critical, scale-invariant behavior. Here, we report on a second-order phase transition accompanied by critical behavior in a system of warm cesium spins driven by linearly polarized light. The ordered phase exhibits macroscopic magnetization when the interactions between the spins become dominant. We measure the phase diagram of the system and observe the collective behavior near the phase boundaries, including power-law dependence of the magnetization and divergence of the susceptibility. Out of equilibrium, we observe a critical slowdown of the spin response time by two orders of magnitude, exceeding 5 s near the phase boundary. This work establishes a controlled platform for investigating equilibrium and nonequilibrium properties of magnetic phases.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.2106400118