Scientists have made a major advance in quantum physics by creating time crystals that last millions of times longer than before. The discovery validates Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek's 2012 theoretical prediction of time crystals, demonstrating the existence of periodic behavior in systems without periodic external influences.
Researchers have successfully extended the life of a time crystal, confirming a theoretical concept proposed by Frank Wilczek. This marks an important step forward for quantum physics.
A research team at TU Dortmund has recently succeeded in creating an extremely durable time crystal that lasts millions of times longer than previous experiments had shown. Through this research, they confirmed an extremely interesting phenomenon proposed by Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek about a decade ago and which has appeared in science fiction movies. The findings have now been published in the journal Nature Physics.
Space crystals are periodic arrangements of atoms on large length scales. This arrangement gives the crystals an attractive appearance, like gemstones with smooth facets. Physics usually treats space and time on the same level. For example, in the special theory of relativity, Frank Wilczek, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, proposed a hypothesis in 2012: In addition to crystals in space, there must also be crystals in time. To do this, he said, one of their physical properties must spontaneously begin to change periodically in time, even if the system does not experience a corresponding periodic disturbance.
The possible existence of such time crystals has been a subject of debate in the scientific community for several years, but it soon appeared in cinemas: for example, in the film "Avengers: Endgame" (2019) from Marvel Studios, time crystals played a central role. Starting in 2017, scientists began to successfully demonstrate potential time crystals on a handful of occasions.
However, unlike Wilczek's original idea, these systems were excited in time with a specific periodicity, but then reacted with a period twice as long. In 2022, a crystal was demonstrated in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Although the excitation is independent of time, that is, constant, it shows periodicity in time. However, the lifetime of this crystal is only a few milliseconds.
Physicists at TU Dortmund led by Dr. Alex Grelich have now designed a special crystal made of gallium indium arsenide in which the nuclear spins act as a time crystal's reservoir. Under continuous illumination, the crystal forms nuclear spin polarization through interaction with the electron spin. It is this nuclear spin polarization that spontaneously generates oscillations, equivalent to a time crystal.
Current experimental results show that the crystal has a lifespan of at least 40 minutes, 10 million times longer than those demonstrated so far, and has the potential to survive even longer.
By systematically varying experimental conditions, the period of a crystal can be varied over a wide range. However, it is also possible to enter regions where the crystal "melts", i.e. loses its periodicity. These regions are also interesting because they exhibit chaotic behavior that can be sustained for long periods of time. For the first time, scientists have been able to use theoretical tools to analyze the chaotic behavior of such systems.
Compiled source: ScitechDaily