Defining Time Crystals via Representation Theory
Statistical Mechanics
2017-09-27 v1 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
High Energy Physics - Lattice
High Energy Physics - Theory
Quantum Physics
Abstract
Time crystals are proposed states of matter which spontaneously break time translation symmetry. There is no settled definition of such states. We offer a new definition which follows the traditional recipe for Wigner symmetries and order parameters. Supplementing our definition with a few plausible assumptions we find that a) systems with time independent Hamiltonians should not exhibit TTSB while b) the recently studied spin glass/Floquet time crystal can be viewed as breaking a global internal symmetry and as breaking time translation symmetry as befits its two names.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1612.08758,
title = {Defining Time Crystals via Representation Theory},
author = {Vedika Khemani and C. W. von Keyserlingk and S. L. Sondhi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.08758},
year = {2017}
}