Experimental observation of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a quantum phase transition

Spontaneous symmetry breaking(SSB)plays a central role in understanding a large variety of phenomena associated with phase transitions,such as superfluid and superconductivity.So far,the transition from a symmetric vacuum to a macroscopically ordered phase has been substantially explored.The process bridging these two distinct phases is critical to understanding how a classical world emerges from a quantum phase transition,but so far remains unexplored in experiment.We here report an experimental demonstration of such a process with a quantum Rabi model engineered with a superconducting circuit.We move the system from the normal phase to the superradiant phase featuring two symmetry-breaking field components,one of which is observed to emerge as the classical reality.The results demonstrate that the environment-induced decoherence plays a critical role in the SSB.