Quantum Dissipative Continuous Time Crystals
Abstract
Continuous time crystals, i.e., nonequilibrium phases with a spontaneously broken continuous time-translational symmetry, have been studied and recently observed in the long-time dynamics of open quantum systems. Here, we investigate a lattice of interacting three-level particles and find two distinct time-crystal phases that cannot be described within mean-field theory. Remarkably, one of them emerges only in the presence of correlations, upon accounting for beyond-mean-field effects. Our findings extend explorations of continuous time-translational symmetry breaking in dissipative systems beyond the classical phenomenology of periodic orbits in a low-dimensional nonlinear system. The proposed model applies directly to the laser-driven dynamics of interacting Rydberg states in neutral atom arrays and suggests that the predicted time-crystal phases are observable in such experiments.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2503.16141,
title = {Quantum Dissipative Continuous Time Crystals},
author = {Felix Russo and Thomas Pohl},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.16141},
year = {2025}
}