Is it Possible to Bring about Enduring Alterations without Employing Energy?
In a groundbreaking discovery, physicists have found a new form of matter that challenges the fundamental laws of physics - the time crystal. This fascinating state of matter, first proposed in 2015 by a group of physicists including Vedika Khemani, Roderich Moessner, Shivaji Sondhi, and Achilleas Lazarides, maintains continuous change without consuming energy.
The time crystal is the first object to break time translation symmetry, being both stable and continuously changing at periodic intervals. Khemani, a condensed matter physicist at Stanford, discovered this new state of matter as a graduate student.
In August 2021, a research group led by Christopher Monroe at the University of Maryland created a real time crystal in a diamond. This was followed by another significant development when Nayak's team, collaborating with Monroe, approximately trapped ions in a 'prethermal' time crystal loop, a discovery they reported in Science magazine in July 2021.
The practical application of Floquet time crystals remains uncertain, but they have already shown promising results in the realm of quantum computing. Google's quantum computer Sycamore, for instance, used Floquet time crystals to complete a task that would take a classical computer 10,000 years in just 200 seconds. This demonstration, which occurred in 2019, marked a significant achievement in the field, showcasing one of the first times a quantum computer has found a useful application.
The discovery of time crystals is a testament to the predictions made by physicist Richard Feynman in a 1982 paper. Feynman suggested that quantum computers could be used to simulate any quantum system, and the time crystal is an example of this prediction coming to fruition.
Moessner, Lazarides, Sondhi, and Khemani investigated what happens to a many-body localized system when it is periodically driven. They discovered that under certain conditions, the laser-driven many-body localization can exhibit a back-and-forth oscillation, moving between two different many-body localization states without absorbing any energy from the laser, repeating indefinitely.
Meanwhile, a team from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands reported creating a Floquet time crystal using the nuclear spins of carbon atoms in diamond. These developments continue to push the boundaries of our understanding of the universe and open up new possibilities for quantum technology.
While the future of time crystals is still uncertain, one thing is clear: they represent a significant step forward in our quest to understand the fundamental nature of the universe and harness its power for practical applications.
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