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Physicists create time crystal

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K

Kraftwerk

Member
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602541/physicists-create-worlds-first-time-crystal/amp/

Physicists create worlds first time crystal

Time crystals were first predicted in 2012. Now researchers have created time crystals for the first time and say they could one day be used as quantum memories.

Crystals are extraordinary objects, not least because of their symmetry. Crystals form repeating patterns that are the same in some directions but not all directions. That’s something of a surprise given that the laws of physics, which govern their formation, are the same in all directions.

That the laws of physics are spatially symmetrical but crystals are not is a phenomenon known as symmetry breaking. It comes about not by adding energy to a system, but by taking it away. Indeed, crystals are a manifestation of systems in their lowest energy states.
But the laws of physics are not only symmetrical in space but also in time. And that raises the interesting question of whether it is possible to break temporal symmetry in the same way. In other words, is it possible to create time crystals?

time-crystal.jpg



Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of Chris Monroe at the University of Maryland in College Park and a few pals, who have created a time crystal in their laboratory for the first time.
Click to expand...

*chuckles* you mean the chaos emeralds?
 
R

rjinaz

Member
As for applications, Monroe and co make a couple of suggestions. They say, for example, that time crystals could be used for quantum information tasks, such as implementing a robust quantum memory.
Click to expand...

Possible application. Seem interesting. A lot of breakthroughs dealing in quantum lately.
 
C

cryptosporidium

Member
inb4 an orphan japanese boy is sent out to collect 7 time crystals in order to turn back the acceleration of the universe's expansion which is set to implode in billions of years
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
This is way beyond me but what exactly are they even "turning" into a crystal? or maybe I'm just misunderstanding the findings. Don't they need something tangible to reduce it down to a crystalline form?
 
RocknRola

RocknRola

Member
Does this mean we get to meet dinosaurs or future aliens?

If neither, not interested. Try harder physicists, you lazy bums!
 
U

Uhyve

Member
HStallion said:
This is way beyond me but what exactly are they even "turning" into a crystal? or maybe I'm just misunderstanding the findings. Don't they need something tangible to reduce it down to a crystalline form?
Click to expand...
I think they're talking about a "time" crystal in the way you could describe a normal crystal as a "light" crystal. Not a crystal literally made of time. So I guess, it's a crystal made in such a way that time would pass through it weirdly?
 
D

digdug2k

Member
But the laws of physics are not only symmetrical in space but also in time. And that raises the interesting question of whether it is possible to break temporal symmetry in the same way. In other words, is it possible to create time crystals?
Click to expand...
I was a horrible physicist, but there are lots of things in physics that don't exhibit spatial or temporal symmetry. This article reads like it was written by a charlatan. If I was you OP, I would not buy these time crystals. Get the real chaos emeralds the way everyone does, through hard work and dedication.
 
P

P44

Member
HStallion said:
This is way beyond me but what exactly are they even "turning" into a crystal? or maybe I'm just misunderstanding the findings. Don't they need something tangible to reduce it down to a crystalline form?
Click to expand...

It's not actually turning anything into a crystal in the sense that you're thinking of crystals.

Previous work found that a 'spatial crystal' is formed when you take some repeating symmetric structure, take it down to its lowest energy state (so you have to lower the temperature to near absolute zero) and you'll find the once repeating symmetric structure is now...not symmetrical, there are bits that are not going along with the symmetry. Obviously you have to push things pretty far to get here, we're talking near -273 celsius, so we're not messing around here. In a nutshell what we're saying here is that the crystals structure where it should be symmetrical in this lowest energy state, it's not - now the structure is depending on where that portion of the crystal is, and depending on where it is. (massive simplification oh god)

Then some clever people thought, we could be able to break symmetry in terms of time. Kick things up a dimension I guess, the same ideas should apply, it's just a little harder to do conceptually. Now, what does symmetry with respect to time actually mean? In this case, it's meaning that the structure of the crystal is dependant on time at it's lowest energy level. So where you would expect these things to just be stationary (because its at its lowest energy level) the positions, the structure of the crystal now depends on the time you observe it at. If i look at it every 10 seconds, I might see exactly the same thing, but if I look at it at 10 seconds and then 13 seconds I might see a different structure. The whole point is in both cases the observable symmetry is broken and is now dependant on some external thing (position in space or time).

So what they've done is they put a line of charged particles together. The charges all repel each other to make a ring. Now this ring should be stationary, so they lower the temperature and what do they spot? Well, the ring of particles is rotating, i.e the position of each particle is dependant on time in its lowest energy state.

On top of that, each particle has a property called 'spin' (nothing to do with spinning). The scientists fire a laser to 'flip' the spin (think of the two terminals on a battery, + and - ; it's not 100% kosher but whatever you get the gist) and this creates a knock-on effect where each particle flips another particles spin like a domino effect. The laser doesn't just fire once, it's like an initial stream of fire, so +, then -, then +, then -. Now the interesting thing they found, was that the knock on flipping effect was happening at twice the rate of the laser flipping and actually completely independent of it. In a nutshell, it sort of showed a cool property of the 'time crystals' in that they clearly have some kind of rate of spin interaction that is like independent of the size of kick you give it, so there's perhaps applications there.

I haven't done QM or Material Science in ages so fellow scientitians don't kill me.
 
A

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I'm not sure I understand what this is - a math formula? A physical object?
 
A

Already Torn

Banned
Uhyve said:
I think they're talking about a "time" crystal in the way you could describe a normal crystal as a "light" crystal. Not a crystal literally made of time. So I guess, it's a crystal made in such a way that time would pass through it weirdly?
Click to expand...
No. It's just formed weird because of temporal irregularities. A normal crystal is formed weird because of spatial irregularities.

At least that's what I got out of it!
 
D

Dr.Acula

Banned
I'm not following the leap that crystals have symmetry, physics have symmetry, therefore time equals crystals.

If time is a flat circle, and pizza is a flat circle, how does that get us time pepperoni?
 
A

Already Torn

Banned
Dr.Acula said:
I'm not following the leap that crystals have symmetry, physics have symmetry, therefore time equals crystals.

If time is a flat circle, and pizza is a flat circle, how does that get us time pepperoni?
Click to expand...
I don't think that's what they're saying. It's a crystal made by changing time.
 
G

gaugebozo

Member
digdug2k said:
I was a horrible physicist, but there are lots of things in physics that don't exhibit spatial or temporal symmetry. This article reads like it was written by a charlatan. If I was you OP, I would not buy these time crystals. Get the real chaos emeralds the way everyone does, through hard work and dedication.
Click to expand...
I really question just what they're talking about here, but they're taking about the laws of physics, not things that they apply to. The laws are symmetric under rotations and translations in space and time.
 
G

gaugebozo

Member
Titanoboa said:
No. It's just formed weird because of temporal irregularities. A normal crystal is formed weird because of spatial irregularities.

At least that's what I got out of it!
Click to expand...
That's what it sounds like, but it doesn't make too much sense, because crystals ARE spatially regular.
 
R

Razmos

Member
P44 said:
It's not actually turning anything into a crystal.

Basically

Crystals are odd because the internal structure is not symmetrical, it varies (unlike most other things - there might be other stuff by my material science knowhow reaches limits here).

That's odd because the laws of physics are spatially symmetrical (i.e it is equivalent here, on the moon, its all the same everywhere).

Now, these guys figured, if crystals can be nonsymmetric in terms of space, can it be nonsymmetric in terms of time. Turns out it can, by cooling some charged particles (within some crystal I guess) down to close to absolute zero, which is like a 0 energy state. Because of the charged particles repelling each other they create a ring which should be perfect, but each particle has this other property called spin (I'm not going to get into spin it's weird to explain properly) and it's each particles spin interacting with other particles that is causing this nonsymmetry.

These interactions happening at a faster rate than it should be, thus the scientists have made a crystal nonsymmetric with respects to time, i.e Time Crystal.

I haven't done QM in ages so fellow scientitians don't kill me.
Click to expand...
That's sounds fascinating, thanks for the explanation.
 
E

Elandyll

Banned
gaugebozo said:
That's what it sounds like, but it doesn't make too much sense, because crystals ARE spatially regular.
Click to expand...
Not in all directions.

If I understand correctly (and I probably don't), the possibility of having crystals altered both spatially -and- temporaly means a possible "state" change, which means 0 or 1 depending on induced factor (chemical? Electrical? Physical?). Therefore the possibility of memory state, but at possible quantum scale, and with a stability that would be incredibly more robust than what we currently have, as crystals are (I think) much less likely to be affected by Electro Magnetic signals as opposed to say anything that would be metal based (or storing an electrical charge).

Am I close? Like at all?
 
L

Lubricus

Member
Elandyll said:
Not in all directions.

If I understand correctly (and I probably don't), the possibility of having crystals altered both spatially -and- temporaly means a possible "state" change, which means 0 or 1 depending on induced factor (chemical? Electrical? Physical?). Therefore the possibility of memory state, but at possible quantum scale, and with a stability that would be incredibly more robust than what we currently have, as crystals are (I think) much less likely to be affected by Electro Magnetic signals as opposed to say anything that would be metal based (or storing an electrical charge).

Am I close? Like at all?
Click to expand...

That's what I thought it was too, basically an on/off state captured in an incredibly stable medium.

Edit: Microsoft was looking at time crystals as well.
First proposed by Nobel-prize winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek, time crystals are hypothetical systems that spontaneously break time-translational symmetry (TTS) – a fundamental symmetry in physics. In plain language, they exhibit tiny movements without using energy.

Crystals have a rigid arrangement of atoms that break translational symmetry. Their structure is not symmetrical in space, unlike a sphere, which looks the same from all directions.

Time crystals break the symmetry of space and time. Wilczek considered a group of atoms in their ground state moving in perpetual circular motion, which is considered an impossible idea because ground states do not have enough energy to spontaneously move.
Click to expand...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/12/microsoft_thinks_time_crystals_are_possible/
 
A

Aasir Osu

Neo Member
So, a month ago, researchers from UC Santa Barbara and Microsoft published a paper on time crystals, suggesting they could be realized in different experimental setups, including, I think, the successful one performed at Maryland.

I only bring this up because, when that paper was published (see here: Floquet Time Crystals) there was of course a lot of news and blog coverage. At the time, the best article on this subject was from this blog:

Impossible Time Crystals May Actually Be Real

Of course, being best is not saying much, as it's still hard to understand, but this is the only popular article I've seen to date that offers up a slightly clearer explanation of how crystals behave/form - though the MIT article actually tells us what this could be useful for, and fills in some important blanks. It's like the article writers aren't a hundred percent sure themselves what they're describing.

The guy who first proposed this idea, Frank Wilczek, caught a little bit of heck when he first proposed time crystals, so it's nice to see his ideas validated - maybe?
 
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