Figure 3: Pictures of experimentally realized kinks in ion crystals.
From: Topological defect formation and spontaneous symmetry breaking in ion Coulomb crystals
(a) Odd kink, created in shallow quenches (νt/2π=500–204 kHz). (b) Extended kink, observed for deep quenches of the radial frequency from νt/2π=500–140 kHz. Exposure times are 50 and 200 ms, respectively. The Coulomb crystals consist of 29 (a) and 32 (b) ions and the phase transition sets in at νt,c/2π≈275 kHz. For the statistics measurements, we use the extended kink configuration to preserve and stabilize the created localized odd kinks. The scale bar indicates a length of 20 μm.
