No Arabic abstract
The dynamical evolution of an inhomogeneous ultracold atomic gas quenched at different controllable rates through the Bose-Einstein condensation phase transition is studied numerically in the premise of a recent experiment in an anisotropic harmonic trap. Our findings based on the stochastic (projected) Gross-Pitaevskii equation are shown to be consistent at early times with the predictions of the homogeneous Kibble-Zurek mechanism. This is demonstrated by collapsing the early dynamical evolution of densities, spectral functions and correlation lengths for different quench rates, based on an appropriate characterization of the distance to criticality felt by the quenched system. The subsequent long-time evolution, beyond the identified dynamical critical region, is also investigated by looking at the behaviour of the density wavefront evolution and the corresponding phase ordering dynamics.
We show that there exists the inverse Kibble-Zurek scenario, when we start with an equilibrium system with broken symmetry and, by imposing perturbations, transform it to a strongly nonequilibrium symmetric state through the sequence of states with spontaneously arising topological defects. We demonstrate the inverse Kibble-Zurek scenario both experimentally, by perturbing the Bose-Einstein condensate of trapped $^{87}$Rb atoms, and also by accomplishing numerical simulations for the same setup as in the experiment, the experimental and numerical results being in good agreement with each other.
When a system crosses a second-order phase transition on a finite timescale, spontaneous symmetry breaking can cause the development of domains with independent order parameters, which then grow and approach each other creating boundary defects. This is known as Kibble-Zurek mechanism. Originally introduced in cosmology, it applies both to classical and quantum phase transitions, in a wide variety of physical systems. Here we report on the spontaneous creation of solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. We measure the power-law dependence of defects number with the quench time, and provide a check of the Kibble-Zurek scaling with the sonic horizon. These results provide a promising test bed for the determination of critical exponents in Bose-Einstein condensates.
In this paper, we study the dynamics of the Bose-Hubbard model by using time-dependent Gutzwiller methods. In particular, we vary the parameters in the Hamiltonian as a function of time, and investigate the temporal behavior of the system from the Mott insulator to the superfluid (SF) crossing a second-order phase transition. We first solve a time-dependent Schrodinger equation for the experimental setup recently done by Braun et.al. [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 112, 3641 (2015)] and show that the numerical and experimental results are in fairly good agreement. However, these results disagree with the Kibble-Zurek scaling. From our numerical study, we reveal a possible source of the discrepancy. Next, we calculate the critical exponents of the correlation length and vortex density in addition to the SF order parameter for a Kibble-Zurek protocol. We show that beside the freeze time $hat{t}$, there exists another important time, $t_{rm eq}$, at which an oscillating behavior of the SF amplitude starts. From calculations of the exponents of the correlation length and vortex density with respect to a quench time $tQ$, we obtain a physical picture of a coarsening process. Finally, we study how the system evolves after the quench. We give a global picture of dynamics of the Bose-Hubbard model.
Atomic Bose-Einstein condensates confined to a dual-ring trap support Josephson vortices as topologically stable defects in the relative phase. We propose a test of the scaling laws for defect formation by quenching a Bose gas to degeneracy in this geometry. Stochastic Gross-Pitaevskii simulations reveal a -1/4 power-law scaling of defect number with quench time for fast quenches, consistent with the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. Slow quenches show stronger quench-time dependence that is explained by the stability properties of Josephson vortices, revealing the boundary of the Kibble-Zurek regime. Interference of the two atomic fields enables clear long-time measurement of stable defects, and a direct test of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in Bose-Einstein condensation.
We experimentally study the energy-temperature relationship of a harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate by transferring a known quantity of energy to the condensate and measuring the resulting temperature change. We consider two methods of heat transfer, the first using a free expansion under gravity and the second using an optical standing wave to diffract the atoms in the potential. We investigate the effect of interactions on the thermodynamics and compare our results to various finite temperature theories.