SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Berkeley News reports on a Jan. 18th paper about time crystals:
If crystals have an atomic structure that repeats in space, like the carbon lattice of a diamond, why can't crystals also have a structure that repeats in time? That is, a time crystal? In a paper published online last week in the journal Physical Review Letters, the UC Berkeley assistant professor of physics describes exactly how to make and measure the properties of such a crystal, and even predicts what the various phases surrounding the time crystal should be — akin to the liquid and gas phases of ice.
This is not mere speculation. Two groups followed [Norman] Yao's blueprint and have already created the first-ever time crystals. The groups at the University of Maryland and Harvard University reported their successes, using two totally different setups, in papers posted online last year, and have submitted the results for publication. Yao is a co-author on both papers.
Time crystals repeat in time because they are kicked periodically, sort of like tapping Jell-O repeatedly to get it to jiggle, Yao said. The big breakthrough, he argues, is less that these particular crystals repeat in time than that they are the first of a large class of new materials that are intrinsically out of equilibrium, unable to settle down to the motionless equilibrium of, for example, a diamond or ruby. "This is a new phase of matter, period, but it is also really cool because it is one of the first examples of non-equilibrium matter," Yao said. "For the last half-century, we have been exploring equilibrium matter, like metals and insulators. We are just now starting to explore a whole new landscape of non-equilibrium matter."
Discrete Time Crystals: Rigidity, Criticality, and Realizations (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.030401) (DX)
Viewpoint: How to Create a Time Crystal
Observation of a Discrete Time Crystal
Previously:
Blueprint for a Time Crystal
Time Crystals Might Exist After All
(Score: 3, Informative) by qzm on Monday January 30 2017, @08:01AM
If they are 'kicked periodically' then they are not 'time crystals', any more than a pendulum is a time crystal for a while..
they are just matter in a forced oscillation.
And stating something is a new phase of matter doesnt make it so.
Discovering something that oscillated without external input forever would of course be much more interesting, and
some of these claims could well apply, but this is just silly, really.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday January 30 2017, @11:22AM
Well, thats like saying that a spatial crystal is "just a bunch of lego bricks lined up in a regular structure". Sure, but doing it at the atomic scale means that your material has some very interesting properties. If you have a lattice of atoms/molecules all oscillating in phase, that can have neat properties (but no one knows what yet).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 30 2017, @01:58PM
(but no one knows what yet)
Survey says?
X--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @07:41AM
> no one knows what yet
Actually there's lots of awesome stuff happening right now. Same-frequency (base states most clearly, hence the earliest superconductors being low temperature) and in-phase (lot of $ in quantum entanglement engineering atm).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 30 2017, @09:45PM
Your objection to the driven periodicity is not an issue [aps.org]. I'm afraid you have not read the link, or if you did you did not understand what it was saying.