Kibble-Zurek mechanism in a polariton supersolid

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in a polariton supersolid within a liquid crystal microcavity, revealing distinct scaling behaviors in different quench regimes and providing experimental validation of the theoretical predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of defect formation via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in a polariton supersolid with tunable spin-orbit coupling, including new experimental measurements.

Findings

Predicted two different Kibble-Zurek scalings for slow and fast quenches.

Confirmed the scalings numerically through simulations.

Experimentally observed a Kibble-Zurek scaling exponent of approximately 1.0.

Abstract

We study the formation of topological defects via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in a polariton supersolid in a liquid crystal microcavity with tunable Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. We predict analytically two different scalings in the slow- and fast-quench regimes, and confirm these predictions numerically. We also present experimental results for the slow-quench regime, demonstrating an original Kibble-Zurek scaling exponent $\eta_{KZM}=1.0\pm 0.2$