Understand
Phase transitions are ubiquitous in nature, ranging from protein folding and denaturisation, to the superconductor-insulator quantum phase transition, to the decoupling of forces in the early universe.
- Remarkably, phase transitions can be arranged into universality classes, where systems having unrelated microscopic physics exhibit identical scaling behaviour near the critical point.
- Here we present an experimental and theoretical study of the Bose-Einstein condensation phase transition of an atomic gas, focusing on one prominent universal element of phase transition dynamics: the spontaneous formation of topological defects during a quench through the transition.
- While the microscopic dynamics of defect formation in phase transitions are generally difficult to investigate, particularly for superfluid phase transitions, Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) offer unique experimental and theoretical opportunities for probing such details.