@article {2768, title = {Observation of a prethermal discrete time crystal}, year = {2021}, month = {2/2/2021}, abstract = {

The conventional framework for defining and understanding phases of matter requires thermodynamic equilibrium. Extensions to non-equilibrium systems have led to surprising insights into the nature of many-body thermalization and the discovery of novel phases of matter, often catalyzed by driving the system periodically. The inherent heating from such Floquet drives can be tempered by including strong disorder in the system, but this can also mask the generality of non-equilibrium phases. In this work, we utilize a trapped-ion quantum simulator to observe signatures of a non-equilibrium driven phase without disorder: the prethermal discrete time crystal (PDTC). Here, many-body heating is suppressed not by disorder-induced many-body localization, but instead via high-frequency driving, leading to an expansive time window where non-equilibrium phases can emerge. We observe a number of key features that distinguish the PDTC from its many-body-localized disordered counterpart, such as the drive-frequency control of its lifetime and the dependence of time-crystalline order on the energy density of the initial state. Floquet prethermalization is thus presented as a general strategy for creating, stabilizing and studying intrinsically out-of-equilibrium phases of matter.

}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.01695}, author = {Antonis Kyprianidis and Francisco Machado and William Morong and Patrick Becker and Kate S. Collins and Dominic V. Else and Lei Feng and Paul W. Hess and Chetan Nayak and Guido Pagano and Norman Y. Yao and Christopher Monroe} } @article {2411, title = {Discrete Time Crystals}, journal = {Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics }, volume = {11}, year = {2020}, month = {3/10/2020}, pages = {467-499}, abstract = {

Experimental advances have allowed for the exploration of nearly isolated quantum many-body systems whose coupling to an external bath is very weak. A particularly interesting class of such systems is those which do not thermalize under their own isolated quantum dynamics. In this review, we highlight the possibility for such systems to exhibit new non-equilibrium phases of matter. In particular, we focus on \"discrete time crystals\", which are many-body phases of matter characterized by a spontaneously broken discrete time translation symmetry. We give a definition of discrete time crystals from several points of view, emphasizing that they are a non-equilibrium phenomenon, which is stabilized by many-body interactions, with no analog in non-interacting systems. We explain the theory behind several proposed models of discrete time crystals, and compare a number of recent realizations, in different experimental contexts.\ 

}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031119-050658}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.13232}, author = {Dominic V. Else and Christopher Monroe and Chetan Nayak and Norman Y. Yao} }