Experiments on spontaneous vortex formation in Josephson tunnel junctions

It has been argued by Zurek and Kibble that the likelihood of producing defects in a continuous phase transition depends in a characteristic way on the quench rate. In this paper we discuss an improved experiment for measuring the scaling exponent sigma for the production of single fluxons in annular symmetric Josephson tunnel junctions. We find sigma similar or equal to 0.5 and show how this can arise from the Kibble-Zurek scenario. Further, we report accurate measurements of the temperature dependence of the junction gap voltage, which allow for precise monitoring of the fast temperature variations during the quench.