Density of topological defects after a quench

Conference · Tue May 13 04:00:00 EDT 1997

OSTI ID:524865

Laguna, P ^[1]; Zurek, W H ^[2]

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1. Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States)
2. Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)

We present results of numerical studies of the Landau-Ginzburg dynamics of the order parameter in one-dimensional models inspired by the condensed matter analogues of cosmological phase transitions. The main goal of our work is to show that, as proposed by one of us, the density of the frozen-out topological defects is set by the competition between the quench rate - the rate at which the phase transition is taking place - and the relaxation rate of the order parameter. In other words, the characteristic domain size, which determines the typical separation of topological defects in the new broken symmetry phase, is of the order of the correlation length at the instant at which the relaxation timescale of the order parameter equals the time remaining to the phase transition. In estimating the size of topological domains, this scenario shares with the original Kibble mechanism the idea that topological defects will form along the boundaries of independently selected regions of the new broken symmetry vacuum. However, it derives the size of such domains from non-equilibrium aspects of the transition (quench rate), as opposed to Kibble`s original proposal in which their size was estimated from the Ginzburg temperature above which thermally activated symmetry restoration can occur.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: National Science Foundation, Washington, DC (United States); National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC (United States); USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 524865
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--97-1884; CONF-961286--1; ON: DE97008157
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

66 PHYSICS
DEFECTS
DENSITY
GINZBURG-LANDAU THEORY
NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
ORDER PARAMETERS
QUENCHING
SYMMETRY BREAKING
TOPOLOGY