Signatures of self-organized criticality in an ultracold atomic gas

S. Helmrich, A. Arias, G. Lochead, T. M. Wintermantel, M. Buchhold, S. Diehl and S. Whitlock ()
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S. Helmrich: Universität Heidelberg
A. Arias: Universität Heidelberg
G. Lochead: Universität Heidelberg
T. M. Wintermantel: Universität Heidelberg
M. Buchhold: California Institute of Technology
S. Diehl: Universität zu Köln
S. Whitlock: Universität Heidelberg

Nature, 2020, vol. 577, issue 7791, 481-486

Abstract: Abstract Self-organized criticality is an elegant explanation of how complex structures emerge and persist throughout nature1, and why such structures often exhibit similar scale-invariant properties2–9. Although self-organized criticality is sometimes captured by simple models that feature a critical point as an attractor for the dynamics10–15, the connection to real-world systems is exceptionally hard to test quantitatively16–21. Here we observe three key signatures of self-organized criticality in the dynamics of a driven–dissipative gas of ultracold potassium atoms: self-organization to a stationary state that is largely independent of the initial conditions; scale-invariance of the final density characterized by a unique scaling function; and large fluctuations of the number of excited atoms (avalanches) obeying a characteristic power-law distribution. This work establishes a well-controlled platform for investigating self-organization phenomena and non-equilibrium criticality, with experimental access to the underlying microscopic details of the system.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1908-6

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