Tue November 2, 2021 4:00 pm
CUA Seminar – Norman Yao: Time Crystals in Open Systems
Location:MIT 6-120
Norman Yao, UC Berkeley
Periodically driven (Floquet) systems provide an intriguing landscape for studying novel phases of non-equilibrium matter. In this talk, I will describe recent advances, surrounding the idea of time translation symmetry breaking. Particular care will be taken to contextualize modern results on discrete time crystals with related phenomena in non-linear dynamical systems. The focus of the talk will be on showing that locally-interacting, Floquet Hamiltonian dynamics coupled to a Langevin bath support finite-temperature discrete time crystals with an infinite auto-correlation time. Our approach utilizes a general mapping from probabilistic cellular automata (PCA) to open classical Floquet systems. Applying this mapping to a variant of the Toom cellular automata leads to a 2D Floquet Hamiltonian with a finite-temperature period-doubling phase transition. Finally, I will discuss how general results from the field of probabilistic cellular automata imply the existence of discrete time crystals in all dimensions, d > 0.
4-4:30pm – Refreshments in 26-214
4:30pm – Seminar in room 6-120