Entanglement marker for lifetime of time crystal in transmon-modulated open Dicke model

TL;DR

This paper explores the robustness and lifetime of discrete time crystal phases in a driven qubit system coupled to lossy modes, revealing a strong correlation between entanglement and DTC longevity, with implications for quantum coherence.

Contribution

It introduces an entanglement-based marker for the lifetime of time crystals in a transmon-modulated open Dicke model, including analysis in the semiclassical limit and with few qubits.

Findings

DTC phase remains robust against detuning and anharmonicity.

Transient DTC observed even with only two qubits.

Long-term entanglement correlates with DTC lifetime.

Abstract

We investigate the discrete time crystal (DTC) phase in a qubit ensemble, periodically driven by its interaction with either a photon or a transmon field, which is prone to dissipative leakage. We find this DTC to be robust against changes in detuning and anharmonicity of the field mode. Additionally, we study the system in the semiclassical limit, where mean-field approximations are valid, and demonstrate the utility of a suitable semiclassical Hamiltonian for this purpose. Intriguingly, we observe that the system exhibits a transient DTC even with only two qubits. We examine the dynamics of bipartite entanglement between the qubits and the field. Our findings show that the entanglement saturates to a steady value early in the dynamics, following a sudden peak. We find a strong positive correlation between this long-term entanglement value and the lifetime of the transient DTC, in a wide range of the parameter regime where the field is due to a lossy photon or a lossy transmon mode, with small detuning.