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arXiv:2208.01055 · Physical Review Letters

Dissipative Prethermal Discrete Time Crystal

DinhDuy Vu, S. Das Sarma

Published Mar 27, 2023• 20 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

An ergodic system subjected to an external periodic drive will be generically heated to infinite temperature. However, if the applied frequency is larger than the typical energy scale of the local Hamiltonian, this heating stops during a prethermal period that extends exponentially with the frequency. During this prethermal period, the system may manifest an emergent symmetry that, if spontaneously broken, will produce subharmonic oscillation of the discrete time crystal (DTC). We study the role of dissipation on the survival time of the prethermal DTC. On one hand, a bath coupling increases the prethermal period by slowing down the accumulation of errors that eventually destroy prethermalization. On the other hand, the spontaneous symmetry breaking is destabilized by interaction with environment. The result of this competition is a nonmonotonic variation, i.e., the survival time of the prethermal DTC first increases and then decreases as the environment coupling gets stronger.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.130.130401

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An ergodic system subjected to an external periodic drive will be generically heated to infinite temperature. However, if the applied frequency is larger than the typical energy scale of the local Hamiltonian, this heating stops during a prethermal period that extends exponentially with the frequency. During this prethermal period, the system may manifest an emergent symmetry that, if spontaneously broken, will produce subharmonic oscillation of the discrete time crystal (DTC). We study the role of dissipation on the survival time of the prethermal DTC. On one hand, a bath coupling increases the prethermal period by slowing down the accumulation of errors that eventually destroy prethermalization. On the other hand, the spontaneous symmetry breaking is destabilized by interaction with environment. The result of this competition is a nonmonotonic variation, i.e., the survival time of the prethermal DTC first increases and then decreases as the environment coupling gets stronger.
We consider a dissipative quantum Ising model periodically driven by a train of $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pulses and investigate dissipative discrete time crystals (DTCs) in solids. In this model, the interaction between the spins spontaneously breaks the discrete time translation symmetry, giving rise to a dissipative DTC, where two ferromagnetic states are switched alternately by each pulse. We microscopically describe the generic dissipation due to thermal contact to an equilibrium heat bath using the Bloch-Redfield equation. In contrast to other DTC studies, this dissipation stabilizes, rather than destroys, the DTC order without fine-tuning as long as the temperature is low enough. Invoking the time-dependent mean-field theory and solving self-consistently the periodic drive, dissipation, and DTC order parameter, we investigate the nonequilibrium DTC phase transition and determine the critical exponents, including a dynamical one. We also find phase transitions without an equilibrium counterpart: a nontrivial interplay of the periodic drive and dissipation gives rise to reentrant DTC transition when changing the pulse interval at a fixed temperature. Also, to demonstrate the rigidity of the DTC, we consider imperfect $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pulses, showing that the DTC is robust against the small imperfections and finding that discrete time quasicrystals can appear for the larger imperfections. Together with experimental proposals in magnetic materials, our results pave the way for realizing the DTC and for uncovering nonequilibrium critical phenomena in real solid-state materials.
Periodically driven quantum systems host a range of non-equilibrium phenomena which are unrealizable at equilibrium. Discrete time-translational symmetry in a periodically driven many-body system can be spontaneously broken to form a discrete time crystal, a putative quantum phase of matter. We present the observation of discrete time crystalline order in a driven system of paramagnetic PPP -donor impurities in isotopically enriched 28Si^{28}Si28Si cooled below 101010 K. The observations exhibit a stable subharmonic peak at half the drive frequency which remains pinned even in the presence of pulse error, a signature of DTC order. We propose a theoretical model based on the paradigmatic central spin model which is in good agreement with experimental observations, and investigate the role of dissipation in the stabilisation of the DTC. Both experiment and theory indicate that the order in this system is primarily a dissipative effect, and which persists in the presence of spin-spin interactions. We present a theoretical phase diagram as a function of interactions and dissipation for the central spin model which is consistent with the experiments. This opens up questions about the interplay of coherent interaction and dissipation for time-translation symmetry breaking in many-body Floquet systems.
Discrete-Time Crystals (DTC) are a non-equilibrium phase of matter characterized by the breaking of time-translation symmetry in periodically driven quantum systems. In this work, we present a detailed thermodynamic analysis of a DTC in a one-dimensional spin-1/2 chain coupled to a thermal bath. We derive a master equation from the microscopic model, and we explore key thermodynamic quantities, such as work, heat, and entropy production. Our results reveal that the DTC signature inevitably decays in the presence of environmental noise, but we show that a periodic measurement scheme can mitigate the effects of decoherence, stabilizing the subharmonic oscillations of the DTC for extended periods. These findings provide insights into the robustness of time-crystalline phases and potential strategies for protecting them in experimental settings.
Motivated by experimental observations of time-symmetry breaking behavior in a periodically driven (Floquet) system, we study a one-dimensional spin model to explore the stability of such Floquet discrete time crystals (DTCs) under the interplay between interaction and the microwave driving. For intermediate interactions and high drivings, from the time evolution of both stroboscopic spin polarization and mutual information between two ends, we show that Floquet DTCs can exist in a prethermal time regime without the tuning of strong disorder. For much weak interactions the system is a symmetry-unbroken phase, while for strong interactions it gives its way to a thermal phase. Through analyzing the entanglement dynamics, we show that large driving fields protect the prethermal DTCs from many-body localization and thermalization. Our results suggest that by increasing the spin interaction, one can drive the experimental system into optimal regime for observing a robust prethermal DTC phase.
Time crystals are a peculiar state of matter. Their emergence hinges on ergodicity breaking, which typically originates from many-body localization or Floquet prethermalization. Here we propose a novel scheme for devising robust dissipative time crystals where the ergodicity is broken through symmetry-induced fragmentation. Building upon a U(1)-symmetry-induced Liouville-space fragmentation, we first propose a generic Liouvillian with long-time oscillations typical of time crystals. We then show that, even when the U(1) symmetry is broken, a prethermal time-crystal behavior survives, with distinct oscillation frequencies at different times of the steady-state approaching dynamics. Intriguingly, the stage-wise prethermal dynamics derive from Fermi statistics and the Liouvillian skin effect of our model -- as the excitations above the boundary-localized dark states can be mapped to the irreducible representations of the permutation group, the branching rules of the permutation group ensure the robustness of the prethermal time crystal. Our work paves the way for devising time crystals through Hilbert-space fragmentation. It also sheds light on the dynamic effects of non-Hermitian physics in many-body quantum open systems.
Prethermal discrete time crystals (DTCs) are a novel phase of periodically driven matter that exhibits robust subharmonic oscillations without requiring disorder. However, previous realizations of prethermal DTCs have relied on the presence of polarization, either spontaneous or induced. Here we introduce a class of prethermal DTCs termed ``unpolarized prethermal discrete time crystals'' (UPDTCs) that arise without any uniform or staggered polarization and propose an experiment to observe them in current trapped-ion quantum simulators. By studying a model of trapped ions using a quantum circuit simulator, we demonstrate that robust period-doubled dynamics can persist in the autocorrelation function of the staggered magnetization, even though its expectation value does not exhibit such dynamics. The period-doubled dynamics is not explained by the classical picture of flipping spins but by quantum fluctuations. We establish that UPDTCs are exponentially long-lived in the high-frequency driving regime, a hallmark of prethermalization. These results expand the known phenomenology and mechanism of prethermal time crystals and underscore the role of quantum effects in stabilizing novel nonequilibrium phases.