Tuning universality far from equilibrium

Understand

Possible universal dynamics of a many-body system far from thermal equilibrium are explored.

• A focus is set on meta-stable non-thermal states exhibiting critical properties such as self-similarity and independence of the details of how the respective state has been reached.
• It is proposed that universal dynamics far from equilibrium can be tuned to exhibit a dynamical phase transition where these critical properties change qualitatively.
• This is demonstrated for the case of a superfluid two-component Bose gas exhibiting different types of long-lived but non-thermal critical order.