Observation of discrete time-crystalline order in a disordered dipolar many-body system

By Soonwon Choi, Joonhee Choi, R. Landig, G. Kucsko, Hengyun Zhou, J. Isoya, Fedor Jelezko, S. Onoda, H. Sumiya, V. Khemani and 4 more. Nature, 2016

920 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Understanding quantum dynamics away from equilibrium is an outstanding challenge in the modern physical sciences. Out-of-equilibrium systems can display a rich variety of phenomena, including self-organized synchronization and dynamical phase transitions. More recently, advances in the controlled manipulation of isolated many-body systems have enabled detailed studies of non-equilibrium phases in strongly interacting quantum matter; for example, the interplay between periodic driving, disorder and strong interactions has been predicted to result in exotic ‘time-crystalline’ phases, in which a system exhibits temporal correlations at integer multiples of the fundamental driving period, breaking the discrete time-translational symmetry of the underlying drive. Here we report the experimental observation of such discrete time-crystalline order in a driven, disordered ensemble of about one million dipolar spin impurities in diamond at room temperature. We observe long-lived temporal correlations, experimentally identify the phase boundary and find that the temporal order is protected by strong interactions. This order is remarkably stable to perturbations, even in the presence of slow thermalization. Our work opens the door to exploring dynamical phases of matter and controlling interacting, disordered many-body systems.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2026e864df08c084856640df29dc130c3a0d98a8

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. D. Abanin
2. Maksym Serbyn
3. I. Bloch
4. E. Altman
5. M. Turner
6. J. Barry
7. J. Schloss
8. C. Hart

In Condensed Matter Physics

1. I. Bloch
2. Maksym Serbyn
3. E. Altman
4. D. Abanin
5. Göran Wendin
6. A. Beekman
7. Alexander V. Balatsky
8. J. Linder

Citations in the corpus

• An introduction to spontaneous symmetry breaking (2019, background): “type of discrete time-crystalline order were reported in experimental setups of trapped ions driven by periodic laser pulses [121], as well as in diamond spin impurities driven by microwave radiation [122]. A recent review can be found in Ref. [123]. A.7Higher-form symmetry The Noether charge was de”
• Quantum information processing with superconducting circuits: a review (2016, background): “Very recently discrete time translational symmetry breaking into a DTC has been observed experimentally in strongly driven spin systems, in an ion trap with 10 ions [544], and in an NV crystal with 106 disordered nuclear spins [545].”
• Odd-frequency superconductivity (2017, background): “We hope that this intriguing connection will be explored to see if there is is indeed one (Choi et al., 2017; Wilczek, 2012; Zhang et al., 2017).”
• Colloquium : Many-body localization, thermalization, and entanglement (2018, background): “First experimental signatures have been reported in NV-centers spin system in diamond and in trapped ionic systems (Choi et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2017).”