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Exploring Inhomogeneous Kibble-Zurek Mechanism in a Spin-Orbit Coupled Bose-Einstein Condensate
Chang-Rui Yi1,2,3, Sheng Liu2,4, Rui-Heng Jiao1,2,3
1Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and Department of Modern Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
Abstract:
The famous Kibble-Zurek mechanism offers us a significant clue to study quantum phase transitions out of equilibrium. Here, we investigate an intriguing phenomenon of a spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate by quenching the Raman coupling strength from a high-symmetry phase (nonmagnetic phase) to a low-symmetry phase (magnetic phase). When crossing the critical point, the fluctuation of momentum distribution leads to delayed bifurcation structures. Simultaneously, the domain information emerges in momentum space. Moreover, the universal scalings of spatiotemporal dynamics are extracted from the fluctuations and domains, which manifests homogeneous and inhomogeneous Kibble-Zurek power laws at different timescales. Our work demonstrates a paradigmatic study on the inhomogeneous Kibble-Zurek mechanism.
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