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Related papers: Time crystallinity in open quantum systems

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Time crystals are systems that spontaneously break time-translation symmetry, exhibiting repeating patterns in time. Recent work has shown that non-Hermitian Floquet systems can host a time crystalline phase with quasi-long-range order. In…

Strongly Correlated Electrons · Physics 2025-03-31 Weihua Xie , Michael Kolodrubetz , Vadim Oganesyan , Daniel P. Arovas

The idea of breaking time-translation symmetry has fascinated humanity at least since ancient proposals of the perpetuum mobile. Unlike the breaking of other symmetries, such as spatial translation in a crystal or spin rotation in a magnet,…

Strongly Correlated Electrons · Physics 2019-10-28 Vedika Khemani , Roderich Moessner , S. L. Sondhi

Spontaneous symmetry breaking is one of the central organizing principles in physics. Time crystals have emerged as an exotic phase of matter, spontaneously breaking the time translational symmetry, and are mainly categorized as discrete or…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-01-16 Jan Carlo Schumann , Igor Lesanovsky , Parvinder Solanki

Time crystals are quantum many-body systems which are able to self-organize their motion in a periodic way in time. Discrete time crystals have been experimentally demonstrated in spin systems. However, the first idea of spontaneous…

Quantum Gases · Physics 2018-07-16 Krzysztof Giergiel , Arkadiusz Kosior , Peter Hannaford , Krzysztof Sacha

A time crystal is an exotic phase of matter where time-translational symmetry is broken; this phase differs from the spatial symmetry breaking induced in crystals in space. Lots of experiments report the transition from a thermal…

We analyse quasi-periodically driven quantum systems that can be mapped exactly to periodically driven ones and find Floquet Time Spirals in analogy with spatially incommensurate spiral magnetic states. Generalising the mechanism to…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2019-10-09 Hongzheng Zhao , Florian Mintert , Johannes Knolle

We study the breaking of the discrete time-translation symmetry in small periodically driven quantum systems. Such systems are intermediate between large closed systems and small dissipative systems, which both display the symmetry…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2017-11-29 Yaxing Zhang , J. Gosner , S. M. Girvin , J. Ankerhold , M. I. Dykman

Many-body quantum systems, under suitable conditions, exhibit time-translation symmetry breaking and settle in a discrete time crystalline (DTC) phase -- an out-of-equilibrium quantum phase of matter. The defining feature of DTC is a robust…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-11-14 Gourab Das , Saptarshi Saha , Rangeet Bhattacharyya

Time crystals are time-periodic self-organized structures postulated by Frank Wilczek in 2012. While the original concept was strongly criticized, it stimulated at the same time an intensive research leading to propositions and experimental…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-01-19 Krzysztof Sacha , Jakub Zakrzewski

Time crystals are many-body systems that spontaneously break time-translation symmetry, and thus exhibit long-range spatiotemporal order and robust periodic motion. Recent results have demonstrated how to build time-crystal phases in driven…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-04-11 R. Hurtado-Gutiérrez , C. Pérez-Espigares , P. I. Hurtado

Although classical nonlinear dynamics suggests that sufficiently strong nonlinearity can sustain oscillations, quantization of such model typically yields a time-independent steady state that respects time-translation symmetry and thus…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-01-29 Song-hai Li , Najmeh Es'haqi-Sani , Xingli Li , Wenlin Li

We study the evolution of quantum fluctuations in systems known as time crystals, hypothetical systems for which the lowest energy state performs a periodic motion. We first discuss some general properties shared by time crystals, and…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2014-10-10 Esteban Castillo , Benjamin Koch , Gonzalo Palma

Discrete time crystals (DTC) exhibit a special non-equilibrium phase of matter in periodically driven many-body systems with spontaneous breaking of time translational symmetry. The presence of decoherence generally enhances thermalization…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-10-31 Rozhin Yousefjani , Angelo Carollo , Krzysztof Sacha , Saif Al-Kuwari , Abolfazl Bayat

Time crystals are unexpected states of matter that spontaneously break time translation symmetry either in a discrete or continuous manner. However, spatially-mesoscale space-time crystals that break both the space and time symmetries have…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-07-24 Hanqing Zhao , Ivan I. Smalyukh

Following the recent realisation that periodically driven quantum matter can support new types of spatiotemporal order, now known as discrete time crystals (DTCs), we consider the stability of this phenomenon. Motivated by its conceptual…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2017-05-24 Achilleas Lazarides , Roderich Moessner

We show a dissipative phase transition in a driven nonlinear quantum oscillator in which a discrete time-translation symmetry is spontaneously broken in two different ways. The corresponding regimes display either discrete or incommensurate…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-08-13 Albert Cabot , Gianluca Giorgi , Roberta Zambrini

We establish a link between metastability and a discrete time-crystalline phase in a periodically driven open quantum system. The mechanism we highlight requires neither the system to display any microscopic symmetry nor the presence of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-01-10 F. M. Gambetta , F. Carollo , M. Marcuzzi , J. P. Garrahan , I. Lesanovsky

Continuous time crystals (CTCs) are characterized by sustained oscillations that break the time translation symmetry. Since the ruling out of equilibrium CTCs by no-go theorems, the emergence of such dynamical phases has been observed in…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-05-01 Ya-Xin Xiang , Qun-Li Lei , Zhengyang Bai , Yu-Qiang Ma

Time crystals are a nonequilibrium phase of matter that extend fundamental spontaneous symmetry breaking into the temporal dimension, typically requiring external driving for their realization. Here, we explore the nonequilibrium phase…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-05-13 Shu Yang , Zeqing Wang , Libin Fu , Jianwen Jie

Time crystals (TCs) are many-body systems displaying spontaneous breaking of time translation symmetry. Here, we demonstrate a TC using driven-dissipative condensates of microcavity exciton-polaritons, spontaneously formed from an…