Time crystals
Cristales de tiempo
- Date
- 2017 · confidence high
- Place
- University of Maryland, College Park / Harvard, United States
- Credited to
- Christopher Monroe; Mikhail Lukin; Frank Wilczek (proposal); Google Quantum AI (2021)
- People
- 👤 Christopher Monroe1965–👤 Frank Wilczek1951–👤 Mikhail Lukin1971–
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
Chains of ions and spins in diamond, driven periodically, oscillate with a period double that of the driving force in a stable way, spontaneously breaking time-translation symmetry as a crystal breaks spatial symmetry. A new phase of matter out of equilibrium.
Discrete time crystals are driven systems; the equilibrium version proposed by Wilczek is forbidden.
What it led to
- Phases of matter out of equilibrium
- Robust quantum memories
- Time crystals in quantum processors (Google, 2021)
Built on
- Wilczek's proposal (2012)
- No-go theorem for equilibrium (Watanabe-Oshikawa, 2015)
- Many-body localisation
Made possible
- Trapped-ion quantum simulation platforms