Information compression at the turbulent-phase transition in cold atom gases

TL;DR

This study investigates how information compression, indicated by minimal Shannon entropy, occurs at the critical point of a phase transition in a turbulent cold atomic gas, revealing a universal property of such transitions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that information compression at criticality is a universal feature in phase transitions, using experimental measurements of atomic density distributions in cold gases.

Findings

Shannon entropy minimizes at the phase transition point.

Information compression is independent of the basis set used.

High-order patterns emerge at criticality.

Abstract

The statistical properties of physical systems in thermal equilibrium are blatantly different from their far-from-equilibrium counterparts. In the latter, fluctuations often dominate the dynamics and might cluster in ordered patterns in the form of dissipative coherent structures. Here, we study the transition of a cold atomic cloud, driven close to a sharp electronic resonance, from a stable to a turbulent phase. From the atomic density distribution -- measured using a spatially-resolved pump-probe technique -- we have computed the Shannon entropy on two different basis sets. Information compression, corresponding to a minimum in the Shannon entropy, has been observed at criticality, where the system fluctuations organize into high-order (low-entropy) patterns. Being independent of the representation used, this feature is a property shared by a vast class of physical systems undergoing phase transitions.