REVIEW 20 cited by
A Brief History of Time Crystals
Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.
This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.
SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event
T0 review · schema-true
One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.
pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp
A Brief History of Time Crystals
read the original abstract
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, time translation symmetry breaking (TTSB) has been tantalisingly elusive. We review this history up to recent developments which have shown that discrete TTSB does takes place in periodically driven (Floquet) systems in the presence of many-body localization. Such Floquet time-crystals represent a new paradigm in quantum statistical mechanics --- that of an intrinsically out-of-equilibrium many-body phase of matter. We include a compendium of necessary background, before specializing to a detailed discussion of the nature, and diagnostics, of TTSB. We formalize the notion of a time-crystal as a stable, macroscopic, conservative clock --- explaining both the need for a many-body system in the infinite volume limit, and for a lack of net energy absorption or dissipation. We also cover a range of related phenomena, including various types of long-lived prethermal time-crystals, and expose the roles played by symmetries -- exact and (emergent) approximate -- and their breaking. We clarify the distinctions between many-body time-crystals and other ostensibly similar phenomena dating as far back as the works of Faraday and Mathieu. En route, we encounter Wilczek's suggestion that macroscopic systems should exhibit TTSB in their ground states, together with a theorem ruling this out. We also analyze pioneering recent experiments detecting signatures of time crystallinity in a variety of different platforms, and provide a detailed theoretical explanation of the physics in each case. In all existing experiments, the system does not realize a `true' time-crystal phase, and we identify necessary ingredients for improvements in future experiments.
Forward citations
Cited by 20 Pith papers
-
Operator Space Transport and the Emergence of Boundary Time Crystals
Boundary time crystals emerge from non-reciprocal operator transport in an irreducible tensor representation of the Liouvillian, unifying collective precession, relaxation, and BTC phases via delocalized eigenmodes.
-
Two-Dimensional Space-Time Groups: Classification and Applications
Complete classification of 2+1D space-time groups yields 275 crystals with novel non-symmorphic symmetries enabling chirality-selective responses and horizontal cone structures in metamaterials.
-
Higher spin Richardson-Gaudin model with time-dependent coupling: Exact dynamics
Exact asymptotic wavefunction for arbitrary spin s in the time-dependent Richardson-Gaudin model is derived independently per spin size, yielding a non-thermal steady state outside the natural GGE with mean-field exac...
-
Emergence of prethermal time quasicrystalline order in a quasiperiodically driven non-interacting spin chain
Quasiperiodic driving of a disordered non-interacting spin-1/2 chain produces prethermal time quasicrystalline order with robust incommensurate frequency peaks, sublinear entanglement growth, and a prethermal plateau ...
-
Floquet Many-Body Cages
Floquet circuits can be built to host many-body cages that carry topological features and π-quasienergy modes, producing time-crystalline spatiotemporal order in models such as the quantum hard disk.
-
Boundary Floquet Control of Bulk non-Hermitian Systems
Boundary Floquet driving reconstructs bulk spectra and dynamics in non-Hermitian skin-effect systems via a new Floquet non-Bloch band theory valid at arbitrary frequencies.
-
Discrete time crystals enabled by Floquet strong Hilbert space fragmentation
Floquet strong Hilbert space fragmentation stabilizes discrete time crystals in a disorder-free kicked XXZ spin chain, with lifetime independent of frequency and exponential in system size.
-
Dissipative Stabilization of Floquet-Engineered Many-Body Order
Statically coupled dissipative auxiliaries cool a Floquet-driven spin chain to a low-energy steady state, and a symmetry-breaking noise variant stabilizes a period-doubled time-crystalline response.
-
Space-time duality approach to (inhomogeneous) integrable quenches
Space-time duality is extended from first principles to general integrable quenches, producing closed-form predictions for entanglement and charge fluctuations that match exact solutions in Rule 54 and TEBD simulation...
-
Compliance versus Sensibility: On the Reasoning Controllability in Large Language Models
LLMs prioritize task-appropriate reasoning over conflicting instructions, but reasoning types are linearly encoded in middle-to-late layers, allowing activation steering to raise instruction compliance by up to 29%.
-
Compliance versus Sensibility: On the Reasoning Controllability in Large Language Models
LLMs favor task-appropriate reasoning over conflicting instructions, yet reasoning types are linearly encoded in middle-to-late layers and can be steered to boost instruction compliance by up to 29%.
-
Quantum jump correlations in long-range dissipative spin systems via cluster and cumulant expansions
Quantum jump correlations and waiting-time distributions in long-range dissipative spins display clear signatures of the paramagnetic-to-ferromagnetic transition when analyzed with tilted Lindbladian, cluster mean-fie...
-
Non-relativistic Floquet Conformal Field Theory
Periodically driven non-relativistic conformal field theories show three Floquet phases — oscillatory, heating, and power-law transition — fixed exactly by the SO(2,1) representation parameter ρ.
-
Quantum jump correlations in long-range dissipative spin systems via cluster and cumulant expansions
Quantum jump correlations and waiting-time distributions in long-range dissipative spin systems display clear signatures of underlying phases and distinct dynamical features across the paramagnetic-to-ferromagnetic tr...
-
Quantum many-body scars leading to time-translation symmetry breaking in kicked interacting spin models
Quantum many-body scars in a kicked long-range Ising model produce time-translation symmetry breaking via π-paired Floquet doublets, yielding period-doubling oscillations that scale to last exponentially long in syste...
-
Quantum quenches in a spin-1 chain with tunable symmetry
Tuning quadrupolar interactions in a spin-1 chain reveals a conserved quantity at the SU(3) point that limits accessible states and alters quench dynamics of magnetization, entanglement, and correlations.
-
On prethermal time crystals from semi-holography
Semi-holographic systems with perturbative and holographic sectors exhibit prethermal time crystals through dissipationless modes in hydrodynamic channels plus short-wavelength instabilities that produce inhomogeneiti...
-
Synchronization in the quantum regime
The paper reviews advances in quantum synchronization, covering characterization of synchronous oscillations, nonclassical forms of synchrony, and many-body synchronization on quantum networks.
-
Simulating Condensed Matter Physics on Quantum Hardware
A survey of quantum hardware platforms and methods for simulating condensed matter physics, covering ground states, topology, non-equilibrium dynamics, and the role of noisy devices as prototypes for fault-tolerant si...
-
Universality in driven open quantum matter
Review of universality principles and examples in driven open quantum matter via Lindblad-Keldysh field theory, organized into three classes of nonequilibrium phenomena.
discussion (0)
Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.