Universal adiabatic dynamics across a quantum critical point

Abstract

We study temporal behavior of a quantum system under a slow external perturbation, which drives the system across a second order quantum phase transition. It is shown that despite the conventional adiabaticity conditions are always violated near the critical point, the number of created excitations still goes to zero in the limit of infinitesimally slow variation of the tuning parameter. It scales with the adiabaticity parameter as a power related to the critical exponents $z$ and $\nu$ characterizing the phase transition. We support general arguments by direct calculations for the Boson Hubbard and the transverse field Ising models.