Winding up by a quench: Insulator to superfluid phase transition in a ring of BECs

TL;DR

This paper investigates the insulator to superfluid phase transition in a ring of Bose-Einstein condensates, confirming the Kibble-Zurek mechanism's prediction of winding number scaling with transition rate.

Contribution

It provides experimental confirmation that the winding number scales as the cube root of the transition rate during the phase transition.

Findings

Winding number scales as the cube root of the transition rate.

The net winding number after the transition is explained by the scaling.

The Kibble-Zurek mechanism accurately predicts phase transition dynamics.

Abstract

We study phase transition from the Mott insulator to superfluid in a periodic optical lattice. Kibble-Zurek mechanism predicts buildup of winding number through random walk of BEC phases, with the step size scaling as a the third root of transition rate. We confirm this and demonstrate that this scaling accounts for the net winding number after the transition.