Abstract

Discrete time crystals are novel phases of matter that break the discrete time translational symmetry of a periodically driven system. In this Letter, we propose a classical system of weakly nonlinear parametrically driven coupled oscillators as a test bed to understand these phases. Such a system of parametric oscillators can be used to model period-doubling instabilities of Josephson junction arrays as well as semiconductor lasers. To show that this instability leads to a discrete time crystal we first show that a certain limit of the system is close to Langevin dynamics in a symmetry breaking potential. We numerically show that this phase exists even in the presence of Ising symmetry breaking using a Glauber dynamics approximation. We then use a field theoretic argument to show that these results are robust to other approximations including the semiclassical limit when applied to dissipative quantum systems.

Publication Details
Publication Type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2024
Volume
133
Number of Pages
266601
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.266601
URL
https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.266601
Journal
Phys. Rev. Lett.
Contributors
Date Published
Dec