Observation of Time-Crystalline Eigenstate Order on a Quantum Processor

Understand

Quantum many-body systems display rich phase structure in their low-temperature equilibrium states.

• However, much of nature is not in thermal equilibrium.
• Remarkably, it was recently predicted that out-of-equilibrium systems can exhibit novel dynamical phases that may otherwise be forbidden by equilibrium thermodynamics, a paradigmatic example being the discrete time crystal (DTC).
• Concretely, dynamical phases can be defined in periodically driven many-body localized systems via the concept of eigenstate order.