Apparent delay of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in quenched open systems

The authors demonstrate here that, for open systems quenched using finite-ramp protocols, dissipation results in a delay in detecting phase transitions if a threshold-based criterion for an order parameter is used. This leads to a regime for intermediate quench speeds, in which the transition time follows the predicted universal scaling of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, despite the system appearing to enter a new phase after the ramp has ended. Their results highlight the subtleties of experimentally observing phase transitions in open systems.