Critical Dynamics of Symmetry Breaking: Quenches, Dissipation and Cosmology

Symmetry-breaking phase transitions may leave behind topological defects investigate the dynamics of such quenches for the one-dimensional, Landau-Ginzburg case and show that the density of kinks, $n$, scales differently with the quench timescale, $\tau_Q$, depending on whether the dynamics in the vicinity of the critical point is overdamped ($n \propto cases may be relevant to the early Universe, and we derive bounds on the initial density of topological defects in cosmological phase transitions