The Kibble–Zurek mechanism generally applies to spontaneous symmetry breaking scenarios where a global symmetry is broken. For gauge symmetries defect formation can arise through the Kibble–Zurek mechanism and the flux trapping mechanism proposed by Hindmarsh and Rajantie. In 2005, it was shown that KZM describes as well the dynamics through a quantum phase transition. In 2008 spontaneous vortices were observed in the formation of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, consistent with the Kibble-Zurek mechanism.