Universal Coarsening in a Homogeneous Two-Dimensional Bose Gas

Abstract

Coarsening of an isolated far-from-equilibrium quantum system is a paradigmatic many-body phenomenon, relevant from subnuclear to cosmological lengthscales, and predicted to feature universal dynamic scaling. Here, we observe 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 establish direct comparison between cold-atom experiments and non-equilibrium field theory, and are applicable to any study of universality far from equilibrium.