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Related papers: Hierarchical time crystals

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Spontaneous breaking of continuous time translation symmetry into a discrete one is related to time crystal formation. While the phenomenon is not possible in the ground state of a time-independent many-body system, it can occur in an…

Quantum Gases · Physics 2018-08-21 Arkadiusz Kosior , Andrzej Syrwid , Krzysztof Sacha

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

It has been argued that the existence of time crystals requires a spontaneous breakdown of the continuous time translation symmetry so to account for the unexpected non-stationary behavior of quantum observables in the ground state. Our…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-11-23 Alex E. Bernardini , Orfeu Bertolami

The aim of this paper is to propose a criterion of spontaneous symmetry breaking that makes reference to the properties of pure phases defined by a translationally invariant state. By avoiding any reference to the ground state, at the basis…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2020-07-08 Carlo Heissenberg , Franco Strocchi

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, a phase showing spontaneous breaking of time-translation symmetry, has been an intriguing subject for systems far away from equilibrium. Recent experiments found such a phase both in the presence and absence of localization,…

Quantum Gases · Physics 2018-03-21 Biao Huang , Ying-Hai Wu , W. Vincent Liu

We introduce a new class of out-of-equilibrium noninteracting topological phases, the topological space-time crystals. These are time-dependent quantum systems which do not have discrete spatial translation symmetries, but instead are…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2022-05-06 Yang Peng

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

While a generic open quantum system decays to its steady state, continuous time crystals (CTCs) develop spontaneous oscillation and never converge to a stationary state. Just as crystals develop correlations in space, CTCs do so in time.…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-10-23 Parvinder Solanki , Fabrizio Minganti

We present a theoretical study of the interaction between an atom characterized by a degenerate ground state and a reciprocal environment, such as a semiconductor nanoparticle, without the presence of external bias. Our analysis reveals…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-03-22 Mário G. Silveirinha , Hugo Terças , Mauro Antezza

We investigate the emergence of a time crystal in a driven-dissipative many-body spin array. In this system the interplay between incoherent spin pumping and collective emission stabilizes a synchronized non-equilibrium steady state which…

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…

Quantum Gases · Physics 2016-08-11 Krzysztof Sacha

We study an emergent semiclassical time crystal composed of two interacting driven-dissipative bosonic modes. The system has a discrete $\mathbb Z_2$ spatial symmetry which, depending on the strength of the drive, can be broken in the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-06-11 Cristóbal Lledó , Marzena H. Szymańska

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

Spontaneous symmetry breaking in systems with symmetry is a cornerstone phenomenon accompanying second-order phase transitions. Here, we predict the opposite phenomenon, namely, spontaneous symmetry emergence in a system that lacks…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-05-21 T. T. Sergeev , E. S. Andrianov , A. A. Zyablovsky

A spacetime crystal is a phase of matter that spontaneously develops periodic order in both space and time. Spacetime crystals have been experimentally observed in microscopic quantum many-body systems and, very recently, in a mesoscopic…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-11 Guoqing Liu , Jimin Bai , Matteo Baggioli , Jie Zhang

We define topological time crystals, a dynamical phase of periodically driven quantum many-body systems capturing the coexistence of intrinsic topological order with the spontaneous breaking of discrete time-translation symmetry. We show…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2024-11-15 Thorsten B. Wahl , Bo Han , Benjamin Béri

Time crystal is a class of non-equilibrium phases with broken time-translational symmetry. Here we demonstrate the time crystal in a single-mode nonlinear cavity. The time crystal originates from the self-oscillation induced by a linear…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-12-05 Yaohua Li , Chenyang Wang , Yuanjiang Tang , Yong-Chun Liu

Time crystals are many-body systems whose ground state spontaneously breaks time-translation symmetry and thus exhibits long-range spatiotemporal order and robust periodic motion. Using hydrodynamics, we have recently shown how an…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-12-15 R. Hurtado-Gutiérrez , C. Pérez-Espigares , P. I. Hurtado

Spontaneous symmetry-breaking in phase transitions occurs when the system Hamiltonian is symmetric under a certain transformation, but the equilibrium states observed in nature are not. Here, we prove that when a discrete symmetry is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-12-13 Ángel L. Corps , Armando Relaño