An equally spaced linear chain of ions provides a test-bed for studying the defect formation in a finite size 1D system. In particular, defect formation related to topological phase transition from a linear configuration to a zig-zag one is of interest here. A semi-empirical expression provides an excellent agreement to the numerical results. The non-adiabatic transition between the chain and zig-zag topologies for a finite size system of 30 ions shows clear distinction from non-uniformly distributed ion chain. Thus the underlying Homogeneous Kibble-Zurek model can be tested in presently accessible ion trap experiments. Furthermore, our study indicates collective defect behaviour appearing through the correlation length measurements.

中文翻译：

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有限尺寸均匀离子链淬火过程中的缺陷产生和动力学

等距线性离子链为研究有限尺寸一维系统中的缺陷形成提供了试验台。特别是，与从线性配置到锯齿形配置的拓扑相变相关的缺陷形成在这里很有趣。半经验表达式与数值结果非常吻合。对于 30 个离子的有限尺寸系统，链和锯齿形拓扑之间的非绝热跃迁与非均匀分布的离子链有明显区别。因此，可以在目前可用的离子阱实验中测试基本的 Homogeneous Kibble-Zurek 模型。此外，我们的研究表明通过相关长度测量出现集体缺陷行为。