2016/10/25 by Soonwon Choi, Joonhee Choi, Renate Landig +11 · 1,039 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Boundary value problem #Condensed matter physics #Dipole #Periodic boundary conditions #Phase (matter) #Phase transition #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Statistical physics #Theoretical and Computational Physics #Thermalisation #Translational symmetry #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.str-el #physics.atom-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nature21426
published in Nature 543(7644), 221-225 (Nature Portfolio) · 6 + 3 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2016/10/25 · openalex publication_date 2017/03/07 · arxiv updated 2020/06/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Understanding quantum dynamics away from equilibrium is an outstanding challenge in the modern physical sciences. It is well known that out-of-equilibrium systems can display a rich array of phenomena, ranging from self-organized synchronization to dynamical phase transitions. More recently, advances in the controlled manipulation of isolated many-body systems have enabled detailed studies of non-equilibrium phases in strongly interacting quantum matter. As a particularly striking example, the interplay of periodic driving, disorder, and strong interactions has recently been predicted to result in exotic "time-crystalline" phases, which spontaneously break the discrete time-translation symmetry of the underlying drive. Here, we report the experimental observation of such discrete time-crystalline order in a driven, disordered ensemble of ∼ 106 dipolar spin impurities in diamond at room-temperature. We observe long-lived temporal correlations at integer multiples of the fundamental driving period, experimentally identify the phase boundary and find that the temporal order is protected by strong interactions; this order is remarkably stable against perturbations, even in the presence of slow thermalization. Our work opens the door to exploring dynamical phases of matter and controlling interacting, disordered many-body systems.