Strongly Coupled Continuous Time Crystal

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new class of continuous-time crystals in strongly correlated quantum systems, revealing their thermodynamic properties, spontaneous oscillations, and a universal scaling law at phase transition.

Contribution

It applies AdS/CFT duality to derive properties of strongly coupled time crystals and uncovers a universal scaling law for their phase transition.

Findings

Time crystals can spontaneously oscillate without external driving.

A universal scaling law governs the phase transition at critical temperature.

Strongly correlated systems exhibit cooperative many-body tunneling enabling time crystal behavior.

Abstract

Time crystals are classified into discrete time crystals and continuous time crystals based on whether they spontaneously break time-translation symmetry. Continuous-time crystals do not require external driving. By introducing AdS/CFT duality to time crystals, we derive their thermodynamic limit and find that in strongly correlated many-body systems such as a 3D optical lattice(ions or tweezer in supplemental materials), cooperative many-body tunneling enables time crystals to oscillate spontaneously. In strongly correlated quantum systems driven by many-body cooperative tunneling, we discover a universal scaling law governing the time-crystalline phase transition at a critical temperature.