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Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Spontaneous breaking of time-reversal symmetry and time-crystal states in chiral atomic systems

Mário G. Silveirinha, Hugo Terças, Mauro Antezza

Published Dec 18, 2023• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Half-integer spin systems are characterized by a degenerate ground state. Here, the authors show that the chiral interactions of a spin-\textonehalf{} qubit with the vacuum fluctuations may spontaneously break both the time-reversal and the time-translation symmetries. In the former case, the electron spin becomes anchored along some particular direction of space determined by a geometrical symmetry. In contrast, the latter situation occurs when the intrinsic spin magnetic moment undergoes a cyclic oscillation in the ground state, realizing a time crystal.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.108.235154

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Half-integer spin systems are characterized by a degenerate ground state. Here, the authors show that the chiral interactions of a spin-\textonehalf{} qubit with the vacuum fluctuations may spontaneously break both the time-reversal and the time-translation symmetries. In the former case, the electron spin becomes anchored along some particular direction of space determined by a geometrical symmetry. In contrast, the latter situation occurs when the intrinsic spin magnetic moment undergoes a cyclic oscillation in the ground state, realizing a time crystal.
We present a theoretical study of the interaction between an atom characterized by a degenerate ground state and a reciprocal environment, such as a semiconductor nanoparticle, without the presence of external bias. Our analysis reveals that the combined influence of the electron's intrinsic spin magnetic moment on the environment and the chiral atomic dipolar transitions may lead to either the spontaneous breaking of time-reversal symmetry or the emergence of time-crystal-like states with remarkably long relaxation times. The different behavior is ruled by the handedness of the precession motion of the atom's spin vector, which is induced by virtual chiral-dipolar transitions. Specifically, when the relative orientation of the precession angular velocity and the electron spin vector is as in a spinning top, the system manifests time-crystal-like states. Conversely, with the opposite relative orientation, the system experiences spontaneous symmetry breaking of time-reversal symmetry. Our findings introduce a novel mechanism for the spontaneous breaking of time-reversal symmetry in atomic systems, and unveil an exciting opportunity to engineer a nonreciprocal response at the nanoscale, exclusively driven by the quantum vacuum fluctuations.
In analogy to spontaneous breaking of continuous space translation symmetry in the process of space crystal formation, it was proposed that spontaneous breaking of continuous time translation symmetry could lead to time crystal formation. In other words, a time-independent system prepared in the energy ground state is expected to reveal periodic motion under infinitely weak perturbation. In the case of the system proposed originally by Wilczek, spontaneous breaking of time translation symmetry cannot be observed if one starts with the ground state. We point out that the symmetry breaking can take place if the system is prepared in an excited eigenstate. The latter can be realized experimentally in ultracold atomic gases. We simulate the process of the spontaneous symmetry breaking due to measurements of particle positions and analyze the lifetime of the resulting symmetry broken state.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking plays a pivotal role in physics ranging from the emergence of elementary particles to the phase transitions of matter. The spontaneous breaking of continuous time translation symmetry leads to a novel state of matter named continuous time crystal (CTC). It exhibits periodic oscillation without the need for periodic driving, and the relative phases for repetitively realized oscillations are random. However, the mechanism behind the spontaneous symmetry breaking in CTCs, particularly the random phases, remains elusive. Here we propose and experimentally realize two types of CTCs based on distinct mechanisms: manifold topology and near-chaotic motion. We observe both types of CTCs in thermal atomic ensembles by artificially synthesizing spin-spin nonlinear interactions through a measurement-feedback scheme. Our work provides general recipes for the realization of CTCs, and paves the way for exploring CTCs in various systems.
The discovery of high temperature superconductivity inspired a number of novel proposals, one of which, put forward by C.M.Varma, involves the breaking of time-reversal symmetry to explain the physics of the underdoped pseudogap phase. It was proposed that time-reversal symmetry is spontaneously broken as a result of strong repulsion between the Cu-O electrons to form loop-currents in the system. In this work, we developed a general theory to study the quantum phase transitions in the 2 dimensional strongly interacting electronic systems in which time-reversal symmetry is spontaneously broken in the ground state. We first applied the theory of magnetic groups to identify electronic current-loop patterns in two physically relevant systems: (i) 2-band model involving spinless electrons on a honeycomb lattice with next-nearest-neighbor interactions; (ii) 3-band CuO2CuO_{2}CuO2​ model with and without lattice distortions. Next, by examining the correlation function within the standard ring and ladder Dyson series approximations, we identify the effective Hamiltonian with the relevant interactions responsible for creating low-energy fluctuations near the quantum critical point. The mean-field analysis of this effective Hamiltonian elucidated the fact that time-reversal symmetry breaking in a 2-band model is in the same universality class as the interband particle-hole pair condensation instability which occurs in the semi-conductors under large enough particle-hole attraction. Using Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation and functional integral method, we are able to investigate this instability and the static susceptibility in the condensed phase both in half-filling and doped case. Away from half-filling, because the condensates are metallic and couple to the gapless collective intraband particle-hole excitations, we find that the static susceptibility is generically negative as a result of this coupling, which implies that the condensates are unstable.
Spontaneous breaking of continuous time translation symmetry into a discrete one is related to time crystal formation. While the phenomenon is not possible in the ground state of a time-independent many-body system, it can occur in an excited eigenstate. Here, we concentrate on bosons on a ring with attractive contact interactions and analyze a quantum quench from the time crystal regime to the noninteracting regime. We show that dynamical quantum phase transitions can be observed where the return probability of the system to the initial state before the quench reveals a nonanalytical behavior in time. The problem we consider constitutes an example of the dynamical quantum phase transitions in a system where both time and space continuous translation symmetries are broken.
It is known that the spontaneous time translation symmetry breaking can occur in systems periodically driven at a certain period. We predict a spontaneous breaking of time translation symmetry in an atom-cavity system without external driving, in which a time scale is determined by the time of light bypass of the resonator. We demonstrate that there is a parameter range, in which a system state returns to its initial state only after two bypasses of the resonator. We believe that the predicted phenomenon opens a way to a new direction in the time crystal field.