Testing the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in Rayleigh-Bénard convection

Abstract

We report experimental evidence of the fact that, in an emerging Rayleigh-Bénard structure, the density of defects which appear scales as a power law in the rate of change of the control parameter. The scaling exponents agree with those calculated from the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. This is the first evidence to our knowledge that this mechanism works in a hydrodynamical system.