We present a new mechanism for realizing of time crystal phase with arbitrary period, termed as commensurate time crystal (CTC), in a quantum seesaw constructed by an interacting Bose-Hubbard model. By periodically modulating the Hamiltonian, we find that the wave function will recover to its initial condition to when the modulating frequency is commensurate with the initial energy level spacing between the ground and first excited levels. The period is determined by the driving frequency and commensurate ratio. In this case, the wave function will almost be restricted to the lowest two instantaneous energy levels. By projecting the wave function to these two relevant states, the dynamics is exactly the same as that for a spin precessing dynamics and nutating dynamics about an rotating axis. The commensurate motion between these two dynamics give rise to CTC. We map out the corresponding phase diagram and show that in the low frequency regime the state is thermalized and in the strong modulating limit, the dynamics is determined by the effective Floquet Hamiltonian. This CTC is realizable between these two limits. The measurement of this dynamics from mean position and mean momentum in phase space is also discussed.
We present a new mechanism for realizing of time crystal phase with arbitrary period, termed as commensurate time crystal (CTC), in a quantum seesaw constructed by an interacting Bose-Hubbard model. By periodically modulating the Hamiltonian, we find that the wave function will recover to its initial condition to when the modulating frequency is commensurate with the initial energy level spacing between the ground and first excited levels. The period is determined by the driving frequency and commensurate ratio. In this case, the wave function will almost be restricted to the lowest two instantaneous energy levels. By projecting the wave function to these two relevant states, the dynamics is exactly the same as that for a spin precessing dynamics and nutating dynamics about an rotating axis. The commensurate motion between these two dynamics give rise to CTC. We map out the corresponding phase diagram and show that in the low frequency regime the state is thermalized and in the strong modulating limit, the dynamics is determined by the effective Floquet Hamiltonian. This CTC is realizable between these two limits. The measurement of this dynamics from mean position and mean momentum in phase space is also discussed.
Abstract The multifrequency resonance has been widely explored in the context of single-particle models, of which the modulating Rabi model has been the most widely investigated. It has been found that with diagonal periodic modulation, steady dynamics can be realized in some well-defined discrete frequencies. These frequencies are independent of off-diagonal couplings. In this work, we generalize this physics to the many-body seesaw realized using the tilted Bose–Hubbard model. We find that the wave function will recover to its initial condition when the modulation frequency is commensurate with the initial energy level spacing between the ground and the first excited levels. The period is determined by the driving frequency and commensurate ratio. In this case, the wave function will be almost exclusively restricted to the lowest two instantaneous energy levels. By projecting the wave function to these two relevant states, the dynamics is exactly the same as that for the spin precession dynamics and nutation dynamics around an oscillating axis. We map out the corresponding phase diagram, and show that, in the low-frequency regime, the state is thermalized, and in the strong modulation limit, the dynamics is determined by the effective Floquet Hamiltonian. The measurement of these dynamics from the mean position and mean momentum in phase space are also discussed. Our results provide new insights into multifrequency resonance in the many-body system.
We demonstrate the emergence of a time crystal of atoms in a high-finesse optical cavity driven by a phase-modulated transverse pump field, resulting in a shaken lattice. This shaken system exhibits macroscopic oscillations in the number of cavity photons and order parameters at noninteger multiples of the driving period, which signals the appearance of an incommensurate time crystal. The subharmonic oscillatory motion corresponds to dynamical switching between symmetry-broken states, which are nonequilibrium bond ordered density wave states. Employing a semiclassical phase-space representation for the driven-dissipative quantum dynamics, we confirm the rigidity and persistence of the time crystalline phase. We identify experimentally relevant parameter regimes for which the time crystal phase is long lived, and map out the dynamical phase diagram. We compare and contrast the incommensurate time crystal with the commensurate Dicke time crystal in the amplitude-modulated case.
We propose the concept of a spontaneous many-body Floquet state. This is a state that, in the absence of external periodic driving, self-oscillates like in the presence of a periodic Hamiltonian, this behavior being spontaneously induced by many-body interactions. In addition, its quantum fluctuations are described by regular Floquet theory. Furthermore, it is also a time crystal, presenting long-range time-periodic order. However, this crystalline behavior is very different to that of conventional Floquet discrete time crystals: here, there is no external periodic driving, energy is conserved, and the nature of the spontaneous symmetry breaking is continuous instead of discrete. We demonstrate that spontaneous many-body Floquet states can emerge in a variety of canonical many-body problems, ranging from interacting fermions to Bose-Hubbard models. We specifically show that a spontaneous many-body Floquet state is a universal intrinsic state of a one-dimensional flowing atom condensate, both subsonic and supersonic, resulting from a dynamical phase transition and robust against external perturbations and quantum fluctuations, proposing also realistic experimental scenarios for its observation. A spontaneous many-body Floquet state not only represents a realization of a continuous time crystal, but also another paradigm in Floquet physics.
Abstract We study the tunneling dynamics of N = 10 one-dimensional interacting bosons confined in a temporally driven double well potential that imitates a quantum seesaw and how we can manipulate these dynamics by changing the drive of the seesaw potential. We emulate the seesaw with a driven double well potential and consider two driving protocols: an harmonic constant-frequency drive and a chirped drive with linearly increasing frequency. We consider the time-dependent many-body Schrödinger equation of a repulsively interacting quasi-one-dimensional few-boson system. We solve it by using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB) as implemented in the MCTDH-X software. For an harmonic drive and at small values of the driving amplitude, the dynamics of the particles become very slow rendering a stationary-like state. In a phase-space picture the population imbalance between the wells follows a trajectory which is restricted to a comparatively small region of space. For an harmonic drive at intermediate amplitudes, the dynamics become periodic in nature, implying that the bosons populate each of wells periodically. At comparatively large amplitudes of the harmonic drive, the dynamics show features of chaos in phase-space representation. For the chirped drive with a driving frequency increasing linearly in time, the imbalance of the atoms in the seesaw, however, has a temporal evolution that is faster for certain frequency ranges. The tunneling dynamics in such cases, for small amplitudes, show the appearance of quasi-periodicity with simultaneously present slow and fast oscillations. Increasing the amplitude of the chirped drive, we observe that the dynamics, although being periodic, become severely damped in their amplitude. Our study establishes that by tuning the temporal evolution of the quantum seesaw, a precise control of tunneling dynamics of the correlated bosons can be achieved. Since harmonic driving and chirp frequency modulation of the seesaw are experimentally achievable, our simulations can be experimentally realized in laboratories dealing with cold atomic gases.
We show the emergence of Floquet time crystal (FTC) phases in the Floquet dynamics of periodically driven p-spin models, which describe a collection of spin-1/2 particles with all-to-all p-body interactions. Given the mean-field nature of these models, we treat the problem exactly in the thermodynamic limit and show that, for a given p, these systems can host various robust time-crystalline responses with period nT, where T is the period of the drive and n an integer between 2 and p. In particular, the case of four-body interactions (p=4) gives rise to both a usual period-doubling crystal and also a period-quadrupling phase. We develop a comprehensive framework to predict robust subharmonic response in classical area-preserving maps, and use this as a basis to predict the occurrence and characterize the stability of the resulting mean-field FTC phases in the quantum regime. Our analysis reveals that the robustness of the time-crystal behavior is reduced as their period increases, and establishes a connection between the emergence of time crystals, described by eigenstate ordering and robust subharmonic response, and the phenomenology of excited state and dynamical quantum phase transitions. Finally, for the models hosting two or more coexisting time crystal phases, we define protocols where the periodic subharmonic response of the system can be varied in time via the nonperiodic modulation of an external control parameter.
The study of phases is useful for understanding novel states of matter. One such state of matter is time crystals which constitute periodically driven interacting many-body systems that spontaneously break time translation symmetry. Time crystals with arbitrary periods (and dimensions) can be realized using the model of Bose-Einstein condensates bouncing on periodically driven mirror(s). In this work, we identify the different phases that characterize the two-dimensional time crystal. By determining the optimal initial conditions and value of system parameters, we provide a practical route to realize a specific phase of the time crystal. These different phases can be mapped to the many-body states existing on a two-dimensional Hubbard lattice model, thereby opening up interesting opportunities for quantum simulation of many-body physics in time lattices.