Far from equilibrium, universal dynamics prevails in many different situations, from pattern coarsening to turbulence. A central longstanding problem concerns the development of a theory of coarsening that rests on the microscopic properties of the system and allows identifying the interaction mechanisms underlying a possible overarching universality class of the associated scaling dynamics. In quantum systems, this is complicated by the existence of nonlinear and topological excitations due to the compact nature of phase degrees of freedom. We show that the double sine-Gordon model as a noncompact low-energy effective model of the spin-1 Bose gas accounts for subdiffusive coarsening dynamics, identifying field configurations spread over multiple wells of the sinusoidal potential as a precondition for the slow scaling. This is in contrast to diffusion-type scaling, which the model is known to exhibit as well, where field configurations are seen to not extend over more than two wells. Experimental observations of a spinor BEC support these characteristics, thus constituting a platform for the investigation of sine-Gordon dynamics. Our results point to a path towards a classification of pattern coarsening in many-body systems on the basis of microscopic models.
Far from equilibrium, universal dynamics prevails in many different situations, from pattern coarsening to turbulence. A central longstanding problem concerns the development of a theory of coarsening that rests on the microscopic properties of the system and allows identifying the interaction mechanisms underlying a possible overarching universality class of the associated scaling dynamics. In quantum systems, this is complicated by the existence of nonlinear and topological excitations due to the compact nature of phase degrees of freedom. We show that the double sine-Gordon model as a noncompact low-energy effective model of the spin-1 Bose gas accounts for subdiffusive coarsening dynamics, identifying field configurations spread over multiple wells of the sinusoidal potential as a precondition for the slow scaling. This is in contrast to diffusion-type scaling, which the model is known to exhibit as well, where field configurations are seen to not extend over more than two wells. Experimental observations of a spinor BEC support these characteristics, thus constituting a platform for the investigation of sine-Gordon dynamics. Our results point to a path towards a classification of pattern coarsening in many-body systems on the basis of microscopic models.
Quantum mechanical many-body systems are inherently hard to describe microscopically due to the exponential scaling of their state space with the number of particles. Progress in many-body physics is therefore often facilitated by identifying the relevant degrees of freedom of a system and constructing an effective field theory containing the dominant physical processes for the phenomena one would like to understand. Universal dynamics far from equilibrium, which has first been experimentally observed in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate, has emerged as an im- portant concept which so far has eluded a comprehensive theoretical explanation. In this thesis, we experimentally test the validity of the sine-Gordon model, a paradigmatic integrable model in non-linear physics that describes the low energy behavior of a multitude of physical systems, as the effective field theory for our experimental platform, which is a spinor Bose-Einstein conden- sate. We find qualitative agreement in a first set of quench experiments between the late-time dynamics of the condensate and the effective theory for a wide range of parameters. The presence of topological excitations is conjectured to have an influence on the universal dy- namics exhibited by many-body systems. We develop a novel phase imprinting scheme in order to locally manipulate the degree of freedom of the effective sine-Gordon theory. We use the imprinting scheme to deterministically generate sine-Gordon-type solitons in the spinor con- densate, and characterize their behavior. The ability to control the velocity of the solitons with an experimental parameter opens up the study of collisions of the sine-Gordon-type solitons. We characterize the interaction of the solitons during collision, finding quantitative agreement with numerical simulations. We furthermore find that the solitons display even richer behavior than in the integrable sine-Gordon model, opening up the study of non-integrable effects such as energy transfer between internal and external modes. Observing the full spin-1 nature of the solitons during collisions additionally reveals that the solitons are a special case of a larger family of solitonic solutions. These results lay the foundation for the experimental exploration of uni- versal dynamics and its physical mechanisms through an effective field theory. The investigation of the sine-Gordon-type solitons furthermore constitutes the first experimental study of solitons in multicomponent Bose-Einstein condensates that go beyond the so-called Manakov regime.
Coarsening of an isolated far-from-equilibrium quantum system is a paradigmatic many-body phenomenon, relevant from subnuclear to cosmological length scales and predicted to feature universal dynamic scaling. Here, we observed universal scaling in the coarsening of a homogeneous two-dimensional Bose gas, with exponents that match analytical predictions. For different initial states, we reveal universal scaling in the experimentally accessible finite-time dynamics by elucidating and accounting for the initial-state-dependent prescaling effects. The methods we introduce allow direct comparison between cold-atom experiments and nonequilibrium field theory and are applicable to any study of universality far from equilibrium.
Relaxation and condensation of an isolated low-energy Bose gas provide an ideal setting for the study of the universal features of far-from-equilibrium many-body dynamics and the emergence of long-range order. Conceptually, the emergence of such order involves two steps: the formation of local coherence, on a system-specific microscopic lengthscale, and the spreading of coherence, over lengthscales much larger than any microscopic scale. The latter is understood in terms of universal phase-ordering kinetics, or coarsening, characterized by an algebraic growth of the coherence length. Here, for a homogeneous Bose gas with tunable interactions, we show that the former also has a universal description, within the framework of weak wave turbulence (WWT). Specifically, the initial transport of particles to low momenta corresponds to an inverse turbulent cascade that is, in agreement with the WWT theory, characterized by a power-law momentum distribution, with exponent γ=2.4(1), and transport times ∝(na)−2, where n is the gas density and a the s-wave scattering length.
Abstract Predicting the dynamics of quantum systems far from equilibrium represents one of the most challenging problems in theoretical many-body physics1, 2. While the evolution of a many-body system is in general intractable in all its details, relevant observables can become insensitive to microscopic system parameters and initial conditions. This is the basis of the phenomenon of universality. Far from equilibrium, universality is identified through the scaling of the spatio-temporal evolution of the system, captured by universal exponents and functions. Theoretically, this has been studied in examples as different as the reheating process in inflationary Universe cosmology3, 4, the dynamics of nuclear collision experiments described by quantum chromodynamics5, 6, and the post-quench dynamics in dilute quantum gases in non-relativistic quantum field theory7–11. However, an experimental demonstration of such scaling evolution in space and time in a quantum many-body system has been lacking. Here we observe the emergence of universal dynamics by evaluating spatially resolved spin correlations in a quasi-one-dimensional spinor Bose–Einstein condensate12–16. For long evolution times we extract the scaling properties from the spatial correlations of the spin excitations. From this we find the dynamics to be governed by an emergent conserved quantity and the transport of spin excitations towards low momentum scales. Our results establish an important class of non-stationary systems whose dynamics is encoded in time-independent scaling exponents and functions, signalling the existence of non-thermal fixed points10, 17, 18. We confirm that the non-thermal scaling phenomenon involves no fine-tuning of parameters, by preparing different initial conditions and observing the same scaling behaviour. Our analogue quantum simulation approach provides the basis with which to reveal the underlying mechanisms and characteristics of non-thermal universality classes. One may use this universality to learn, from experiments with ultracold gases, about fundamental aspects of dynamics studied in cosmology and quantum chromodynamics.
Isolated many-body systems far from equilibrium may exhibit scaling dynamics with universal exponents indicating the proximity of the time evolution to a nonthermal fixed point. We find universal dynamics connected with the occurrence of extreme wave excitations in the mutually coupled magnetic components of a spinor gas which propagate in an effectively random potential. The frequency of these rogue waves is affected by the time-varying spatial correlation length of the potential, giving rise to an additional exponent δ_{c}≃1/3 for temporal scaling, which is different from the exponent β_{V}≃1/4 characterizing the scaling of the correlation length ℓ_{V}∼t^{β_{V}} in time. As a result of the caustics, i.e., focusing events, real-time instanton defects appear in the Larmor phase of the spin-1 system as vortices in space and time. The temporal correlations governing the instanton occurrence frequency scale as t^{δ_{I}}. This suggests that the universality class of a nonthermal fixed point could be characterized by different, mutually related exponents defining the evolution in time and space, respectively. Our results have a strong relevance for understanding pattern coarsening from first principles and potential implications for dynamics ranging from the early Universe to geophysical dynamics and microphysics.
In these notes we discuss recent developments in the field of non-equilibrium quantum dynamics. Specifically, we consider nearly coherent Bose gases brought far out of equilibrium and study their behaviour in view of connections between universal properties, (quasi-)topological field configurations and turbulent dynamics. We demonstrate that the isolated Bose gas, on its way back to thermal equilibrium, can approach metastable non-equilibrium configurations and spend a long time in their vicinity. In such configurations, which have been termed non-thermal fixed points, the system shows universal long-range properties manifest through scaling, i.e., self-similar correlations. The spatial field pattern, at the same time, is characterized by the appearance of defects and domain formation whose geometry gives rise to the particular scaling laws seen in the correlation functions. We obtain an overall picture which connects well-known concepts for describing universal dynamics such as wave-turbulence, superfluid turbulence, and (quasi-)topological excitations. This allows to bring together a wide range of concepts and methods with a large spectrum of applications.