Quenched Kosterlitz-Thouless Superfluid Transitions

Abstract

The properties of rapidly quenched superfluid phase transitions are computed for two-dimensional Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) systems. The decay in the vortex-pair density and the recovery of the superfluid density after a quench are found by solving the Fokker-Planck equation describing the vortex dynamics, in conjunction with the KT recursion relations. The vortex density is found to decay approximately as the inverse of the time from the quench, in agreement with computer simulations and with scaling theories.