Defect formation beyond Kibble-Zurek mechanism and holography

Understand

We study the dynamic after a smooth quench across a continuous transition from the disordered phase to the ordered phase.

• Based on scaling ideas, linear response and the spectrum of unstable modes, we develop a theoretical framework, valid for any second order phase transition, for the early-time evolution of the condensate in the broken phase.
• Our analysis unveils a novel period of non-adiabatic evolution after the system passes through the phase transition, where a parametrically large amount of coarsening occurs before a well-defined condensate forms.
• Our formalism predicts a rate of defect formation parametrically smaller than the Kibble-Zurek prediction and yields a criterion for the break-down of Kibble-Zurek scaling for sufficiently fast quenches.