All-Optical Dissipative Discrete Time Crystals

TL;DR

This paper reports the first experimental demonstration of all-optical dissipative discrete time crystals in a Kerr microcavity, revealing novel states and phase transitions, and paving the way for practical quantum technologies.

Contribution

It introduces a room-temperature, chip-scale platform for observing and controlling dissipative DTCs using self-injection locking in a Kerr cavity, a novel experimental achievement.

Findings

Observation of photonic DTCs with defects

Demonstration of DTC phase transitions

Realization of mutual interactions between DTCs

Abstract

Time crystals are periodic states exhibiting spontaneous symmetry breaking in either time-independent or periodically forced quantum many-body systems. Spontaneous modification of discrete time translation symmetry in a periodically driven physical system can create a discrete time crystal (DTC). DTCs constitute a state of matter with properties such as temporal rigid long-range order and coherence which are inherently desirable for quantum computing and quantum information processing. Despite their appeal, experimental demonstrations of DTCs are scarce and hence many significant aspects of their behavior remain unexplored. Here, we report the experimental observation and theoretical investigation of photonic DTCs in a Kerr-nonlinear optical microcavity. Empowered by the simultaneous self-injection locking of two independent lasers with arbitrarily large frequency separation to two cavity modes and a dissipative soliton, this room-temperature all-optical platform enables observing novel states like DTCs carrying defects, and realizing long-awaited phenomena such as DTC phase transitions and mutual interactions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental demonstration of a dissipative DTC, as well as the concurrent self-injection locking of two continuous-wave lasers to different modes of the same family in a Kerr cavity. Combined with monolithic fabrication, it can result in chip-scale DTCs, paving the way for liberating time crystals from sophisticated laboratory setups and propelling them toward real-world applications.