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Cambridge University Press eBooks

Dynamics of Symmetry Breaking

Aron J. Beekman, Louk Rademaker, Jasper van Wezel

Published Sep 3, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this chapter, we focus on the time dynamics encountered during a symmetry-breaking phase transition. After introducing the central concept of a relaxation time, the Kibble–Zurek mechanism arising in continuous phase transitions and the nucleation dynamics of discontinuous transitions are discussed.
DOI
10.1017/9781009575782.012

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In the course of a nonequilibrium continuous phase transition, the dynamics ceases to be adiabatic in the vicinity of the critical point as a result of the critical slowing down (the divergence of the relaxation time in the neighborhood of the critical point). This enforces a local choice of the broken symmetry and can lead to the formation of topological defects. The Kibble–Zurek mechanism (KZM) was developed to describe the associated nonequilibrium dynamics and to estimate the density of defects as a function of the quench rate through the transition. During recent years, several new experiments investigated the formation of defects in phase transitions induced by a quench both in classical and quantum mechanical systems. At the same time, some established results were called into question. We review and analyze the Kibble–Zurek mechanism focusing in particular on this surge of activity, and suggest possible directions for further progress.
The Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM) successfully predicts the density of topological defects deposited by the phase transitions, but it is not clear why. Its key conjecture is that, near the critical point of the second-order phase transition, critical slowing down will result in a period when the system is too sluggish to follow the potential that is changing faster than its reaction time. The correlation length at the freeze-out instant t^\hat tt^ when the order parameter catches up with the post-transition broken symmetry configuration is then decisive, determining when the mosaic of broken symmetry domains locks in topological defects. To understand why the KZM works so well we analyze Landau-Ginzburg model and show why temporal evolution of the order parameter plays such a key role. The analytical solutions we obtain suggest novel, hitherto unexplored, experimentally accessible observables that can shed light on symmetry breaking dynamics while testing the conjecture on which the KZM is based.
The formation of topological defects in second-order phase transitions can be investigated by solving partial differential equations for the evolution of the order parameter in space and time, such as the Langevin equation. We demonstrate that the ordinary differential equations governing either the temporal or spatial dependence in the Langevin equation provide surprisingly substantial insights into the dynamics of the phase transition. The temporal evolution of the order parameter predicts the essence of the adiabatic-impulse scenario, including the scaling of the freeze-out time, which is crucial to the Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM). In particular, Bernoulli differential equations that arise in the overdamped case can be solved analytically. The spatial part of the evolution, in turn, leads to the characteristic size of domains that choose the same broken symmetry. Apart from the fundamental insights into the KZM, this finding enables the exploration of Kibble-Zurek scaling using ordinary differential equations over a large range of quench timescales, which would otherwise be difficult to achieve with numerical simulations of the full partial differential equations.