Universal dynamics of zero-momentum to plane-wave transition in spin–orbit coupled Bose–Einstein condensates

Abstract

We investigate the universal spatiotemporal dynamics in spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates which are driven from the zero-momentum phase to the plane-wave phase. The excitation spectrum reveals that, at the critical point, the Landau critical velocity vanishes and the correlation length diverges. Therefore, according to the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, spatial domains will spontaneously appear in such a quench through the critical point. By simulating the real-time dynamics, we numerically extract the static correlation length critical exponent v and the dynamic critical exponent z from the scalings of the temporal bifurcation delay and the spatial domain number. The numerical scalings consist well with the analytical ones obtained by analyzing the excitation spectrum.

Universality of miscible–immiscible phase separation dynamics in two-component Bose–Einstein condensates

“…These exponents well consist with the ones (v = 1/2, z = 2) obtained from the Landau critical velocity and the correlation length. These critical exponents are in the same universal class as in the previous work [13,11,16,17,34]. However, in a binary BEC with Rabi coupling [5,6,7,8] across the phase separation driven by quenching the Rabi coupling strength, the exponents are given as (v = 1/2, z = 1).…”

“…The non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum phase transitions have attracted great interest in many branches of physics, including cosmology, particle physics and condensed matter physics [1][2][3]. When a system is driven across a phase transition and enters a symmetry broken phase, one of the most nontrivial results is the creation of topological defects, such as domains [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], vortices [14][15][16] and solitons [17][18][19]. The possibility to engineer a quantum phase transition and recover its universality from topological defects is of great significance in non-equilibrium physics [20].…”

Universality in nonlinear passage through the miscible-immiscible phase transition in two component Bose-Einstein condensates

“…Continuous quantum phase transitions, which are associated with spontaneous symmetry breaking [1][2][3], have been extensively studied for many years in various systems. When the system crosses the phase transition, the adiabatic theorem fails, and non-adiabatic topological defects, such as solitons [4][5][6], domains [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], or vortices [17][18][19], are inevitably generated. The formation of the defects and their universal dynamics can be described by a paradigmatic theory called the Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM) [3,7,[20][21][22][23][24], The KZM has been extensively studied in a number of different systems, such as condensed matter systems [25][26][27], quantum many-body systems [23,28,29,44], and ultracold atomic gases [5, 6, 8-17, 30-36, 46].…”

Universal dynamics of superradiant phase transition in the anisotropic quantum Rabi model

“…Due to the gapless excitations at the critical point, the adiabaticity breaks down when a system goes through a continuous phase transition. As a consequence, nontrivial excitations such as domains [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14], vortices [15][16][17] and solitons [18][19][20] appear spontaneously and obey the wellkonwn Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM) [3,4,[21][22][23][24][25]. The KZM has been extensively studied in various systems, from the early universe [3,4], condensed matter systems [26][27][28], trapped ions [29][30][31][32][33], to ultracold atomic gases [5-15, 18-20, 34-37].…”