A supercritical superfluid and vortex unbinding following a quantum quench

TL;DR

This paper investigates the non-equilibrium dynamics of a bilayer 2D superfluid after decoupling, revealing a transient supercritical superfluid state and vortex unbinding phenomena, with implications for understanding quantum phase transitions.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of a reverse-Kibble-Zurek effect and models vortex dynamics post-quench using the truncated Wigner approximation.

Findings

Observation of light cone thermalization and metastable superfluid states.

Identification of vortex-antivortex pair creation and unbinding.

Prediction of measurable interference patterns in experiments.

Abstract

We study the dynamics of the relative phase of a bilayer of two-dimensional superfluids after the two superfluids have been decoupled, using truncated Wigner approximation. On short time scales the relative phase shows "light cone" like thermalization and creates a metastable superfluid state, which can be supercritical. On longer time scales this state relaxes to a disordered state due to dynamical vortex unbinding. This scenario of dynamically suppressed vortex proliferation constitutes a {\it reverse-Kibble-Zurek effect}. We observe dynamics of creation of vortex anti-vortex pairs and their consequent motion. Our predictions can be directly measured in interference experiments, see Ref 1.