We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of one-dimensional Mott-insulating bosons in the presence of a tunable effective electric field $\mathcal{E}$ which takes the system across a quantum critical point separating a disordered and a translation symmetry broken ordered phase. We provide an exact numerical computation of the residual energy $Q$, the log fidelity $F$, the defect density $D/L$, and the order parameter correlation function for a linear-in-time variation of $\mathcal{E}$ with a rate $v$. We discuss the temporal and spatial variation of these quantities for a range of $v$ and for finite system sizes as relevant to realistic experimental setups [J. Simon et al., Nature (London) 472, 307 (2011)]. We show that in finite-sized systems $Q$, $F$, and $D$ obey Kibble-Zurek scaling, and suggest further experiments within this setup to test our theory.

• Received 2 February 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.85.100505