2021/04/30 by Bingtian Ye, Francisco Machado, Norman Y. Yao
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Classical mechanics #Condensed matter physics #Dissipative system #Floquet theory #Geometry #Hamiltonian (control theory) #Homogeneous space #Mathematics #Non-equilibrium thermodynamics #Nonlinear system #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Physics #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Translational symmetry #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.stat-mech #cond-mat.str-el #nlin.CD #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.127.140603
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 140603 (2021) · 8+7 pages and 3+6 figures
openalex publication_date 2021/09/27 · arxiv created 2021/10/01 · arxiv updated 2021/10/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We demonstrate that the prethermal regime of periodically driven (Floquet), classical many-body systems can host nonequilibrium phases of matter. In particular, we show that there exists an effective Hamiltonian that captures the dynamics of ensembles of classical trajectories despite the breakdown of this description at the single trajectory level. In addition, we prove that the effective Hamiltonian can host emergent symmetries protected by the discrete time-translation symmetry of the drive. The spontaneous breaking of such an emergent symmetry leads to a subharmonic response, characteristic of time crystalline order, that survives to exponentially late times in the frequency of the drive. To this end, we numerically demonstrate the existence of classical prethermal time crystals in systems with different dimensionalities and ranges of interaction. Extensions to higher order and fractional time crystals are also discussed.