Kibble-Zurek mechanism for nonequilibrium phase transitions in driven systems with quenched disorder

Abstract

The Kibble-Zurek (KZ) mechanism is traditionally an equilibrium scaling argument that yields an estimate for the density of topological defects in the ordered phase as a function of the quenching rate close to the critical point. Here, the authors show that this argument can be applied to nonequilibrium phase transitions and demonstrate numerically that for superconducting vortex lattices and colloidal ensembles the defect number follow a power law given by the directed percolation universality class.