TY - JOUR
T1 - The inhomogeneous Kibble-Zurek mechanism
T2 - Vortex nucleation during Bose-Einstein condensation
AU - Del Campo, A.
AU - Retzker, A.
AU - Plenio, M. B.
PY - 2011/8
Y1 - 2011/8
N2 - The Kibble-Zurek mechanism is applied to the spontaneous formation of vortices in a harmonically trapped thermal gas following a temperature quench through the critical value for Bose-Einstein condensation. Whereas in the homogeneous scenario, vortex nucleation is always expected, we show that it can be completely suppressed in the presence of the confinement potential whenever the speed of the spatial front undergoing condensation is lower than a threshold velocity. Otherwise, the interplay between the geometry and the causality leads to different scaling laws for the density of vortices as a function of the quench rate, as we also illustrate for the case of a toroidal trapping potential.
AB - The Kibble-Zurek mechanism is applied to the spontaneous formation of vortices in a harmonically trapped thermal gas following a temperature quench through the critical value for Bose-Einstein condensation. Whereas in the homogeneous scenario, vortex nucleation is always expected, we show that it can be completely suppressed in the presence of the confinement potential whenever the speed of the spatial front undergoing condensation is lower than a threshold velocity. Otherwise, the interplay between the geometry and the causality leads to different scaling laws for the density of vortices as a function of the quench rate, as we also illustrate for the case of a toroidal trapping potential.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80051992794&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1367-2630/13/8/083022
DO - 10.1088/1367-2630/13/8/083022
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AN - SCOPUS:80051992794
SN - 1367-2630
VL - 13
JO - New Journal of Physics
JF - New Journal of Physics
M1 - 083022
ER -