Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

Period-multiplexing Floquet Time Crystals in spin systems with multi-body interactions

Presenting Author: Pablo Poggi, University of New Mexico
Contributing Author(s): Manuel Muñoz-Arias, Jon Pajaud, Kevin Kuper, Karthik Chinni, Ivan Deutsch, Poul Jessen

We show the emergence of Floquet time crystal (FTC) phases in periodically driven p-spin models, which describe a collection of spin-1/2 particles with all-to-all p-body interactions. Given the mean-field nature of these models, we treat the problem exactly in the thermodynamic limit and show that, for a given value of p, these systems can host various robust time-crystalline responses with period nT,whereT is the period of the drive and n an integer between 2 and p. In particular, the case of four-body interactions (p = 4) gives rise to both a usual period-doubling crystal and also a novel period-quadrupling phase. On the theoretical front, we develop a comprehensive framework to predict robust subharmonic response in classical area-preserving maps, and use this as a basis to predict the occurrence and characterize the stability of the resulting mean-field FTC phases in the quantum regime. Then, we experimentally study these models using a small quantum processor based on atomic spins, and examine the various challenges associated with identifying FTC phases from experimental data. Finally, we discuss applications of Floquet Time Crystals in quantum technologies.

Read this article online: https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.023018, https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.010351

(Session 1 : Thursday from 9:45 am - 10:15 am)