Stable time rondeau crystals in dissipative many-body systems

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the stabilization of time rondeau crystals in dissipative many-body systems, enabling persistent non-equilibrium order by balancing interactions and dissipation.

Contribution

It introduces a method to stabilize time rondeau crystals using dissipation, overcoming heating issues in driven many-body systems.

Findings

Stable time rondeau crystals persist indefinitely with dissipation.

Synchronization enables stable order without excessive heating.

A de-synchronization phase transition occurs at finite interaction strength.

Abstract

Driven systems offer the potential to realize a wide range of non-equilibrium phenomena that are inaccessible in static systems, such as the discrete time crystals. Time rondeau crystals with a partial temporal order have been proposed as a distinctive prethermal phase of matter in systems driven by structured random protocols. Yet, heating is inevitable in closed systems and time rondeau crystals eventually melt. We introduce dissipation to counteract heating and demonstrate stable time rondeau crystals, which persist indefinitely, in a many-body interacting system. A key ingredient is synchronization in the non-interacting limit, which allows for stable time rondeau order without generating excessive heating. The presence of many-body interaction competes with synchronization and a de-synchronization phase transition occurs at a finite interaction strength. This transition is well captured via a linear stability analysis of the underlying stochastic processes.