Related papers: Seeding crystallization in time
Crystallization represents the prime example of a disorder order transition. In realistic situations, however, container walls and impurities are frequently present and hence crystallization is heterogeneously seeded. Rarely the seeds are…
The compelling original idea of a time crystal has referred to a structure that repeats in time as well as in space, an idea that has attracted significant interest recently. While obstructions to realize such structures became apparent…
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…
The formation of a phase of matter can be associated with the spontaneous breaking of a symmetry. For crystallization, this broken symmetry is the spatial translation symmetry, as the atoms spontaneously localize in a periodic fashion. In…
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…
We show that an ultra-cold atomic cloud bouncing on an oscillating mirror can reveal spontaneous breaking of a discrete time translation symmetry. In many-body simulations we illustrate the process of the symmetry breaking that can be…
Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a fundamental concept in many areas of physics, ranging from cosmology and particle physics to condensed matter. A prime example is the breaking of spatial translation symmetry, which underlies the formation…
The relation between the notion of crystalline symmetry and characteristic time intervals when this symmetry could be observed is analyzed. Several time scales are shown to exist for a system of interacting particles. It is only when the…
Time crystals are classified as discrete or continuous depending on whether they spontaneously break discrete or continuous time translation symmetry. While discrete time crystals have been extensively studied in periodically driven systems…
Crystals arise as the result of the breaking of a spatial translation symmetry. Similarly, translation symmetries can also be broken in time so that discrete time crystals appear. Here, we introduce a method to describe, characterize, and…
When the discrete time-translation symmetry of isolated, periodically driven systems is spontaneously broken, a new phase of matter can emerge. We review some recent developments on both the theoretical underpinnings and experimental…
Time crystals are physical systems whose time translation symmetry is spontaneously broken. Although the spontaneous breaking of continuous time-translation symmetry in static systems is proved impossible for the equilibrium state, the…
Discrete time crystals are periodically driven systems that display spontaneous symmetry breaking of time translation invariance in the form of indefinite subharmonic oscillations. We introduce a thermodynamically consistent model for a…
Time crystals appear when systems display a commensurate spontaneous breaking of the discrete time translational invariance imposed by an external periodic drive. No consensus on the definition has been reached as yet, but important aspects…
The notion of spontaneous symmetry breaking has been well established to characterize classical and quantum phase transitions of matter, such as in condensation, crystallization or quantum magnetism. Generalizations of this paradigm to the…
Sexual reproduction presents significant challenges to formal treatment of evolutionary processes. A starting point for systematic treatments of ecological and evolutionary phenomena has been provided by the gene centered view of evolution…
In analogy to spontaneous breaking of continuous space translation symmetry in the process of space crystal formation, it was proposed that spontaneous breaking of continuous time translation symmetry could lead to time crystal formation.…
We present a simple theory accounting for two central observations in a recent experiment on quantum coarsening and collective dynamics on a programmable quantum simulator [T. Manovitz et al., Nature \textbf{638}, 86 (2025)]: an apparent…
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…
Nucleation is an activated process in which the system has to overcome a free energy barrier in order for a first-order phase transition between the metastable and the stable phases to take place. In the liquid-to-solid transition the…