English

Space-time crystal and space-time group

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2018-03-07 v3 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

Crystal structures and the Bloch theorem play a fundamental role in condensed matter physics. We extend the static crystal to the dynamic "space-time" crystal characterized by the general intertwined space-time periodicities in D+1D+1 dimensions, which include both the static crystal and the Floquet crystal as special cases. A new group structure dubbed "space-time" group is constructed to describe the discrete symmetries of space-time crystal. Compared to space and magnetic groups, space-time group is augmented by "time-screw" rotations and "time-glide" reflections involving fractional translations along the time direction. A complete classification of the 13 space-time groups in 1+1D is performed. The Kramers-type degeneracy can arise from the glide time-reversal symmetry without the half-integer spinor structure, which constrains the winding number patterns of spectral dispersions. In 2+1D, non-symmorphic space-time symmetries enforce spectral degeneracies, leading to protected Floquet semi-metal states. Our work provides a general framework for further studying topological properties of the D+1D+1 dimensional space-time crystal.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1703.03388,
  title  = {Space-time crystal and space-time group},
  author = {Shenglong Xu and Congjun Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.03388},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

4+5 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:41:27.567Z