Seeding crystallization in time

Abstract

We introduce the concept of seeding of crystallization in time by studying the dynamics of an ensemble of coupled continuous time crystals. We demonstrate that a single subsystem in a brokensymmetry phase acting as a nucleation center may induce time-translation symmetry breaking across the entire ensemble. Seeding is observed for both coherent as well as dissipative coupling, and for a broad range of parameter regimes. In the spirit of mutual synchronization, we investigate the parameter regime where all subsystems are in the broken symmetry phase. We observe that more broadly detuned time crystals require weaker coupling strength to be synchronized. This is in contrast to basic knowledge from classical as well as quantum synchronization theory. We show that this surprising observation is a direct consequence of the seeding effect.

Exact bistability and time pseudo-crystallization of driven-dissipative fermionic lattices

“…There are two recently introduced concepts, dissipative time crystals [27,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58], which are systems that have persistent oscillations induced by the dissipation, and boundary time crystals [59][60][61][62][63], which have persistent oscillations in the thermodynamic limit only (cf. discrete, driven versions of time crystals under dissipation [64][65][66][67][68][69][70] and other non-stationary phenomena beyond ob-servables e.g.…”

Observation of quantum phase-synchronization in a nuclear spin-system

“…Platforms that exhibit quantized dynamics have inspired theoretical studies in systems such as trapped ions [2,3], superconducting circuits [4], atomic ensembles [5], optomechanical systems [6][7][8][9] and nanomechanical systems [10,11]. Theoretical studies have shown fundamental implications of synchronization to other fields such as entanglement generation [12,13], thermodynamics [14,15], quantum networks [16] and continuous time crystals [17].…”