Separate teams of scientists at the University of Maryland and Harvard University have created and observed time crystals in the lab without the assistance of Dr. Who, the fictional time lord in the Doctor Who series.

Time Crystals

Time crystals are the repetition of atomic structures or signatures in time. They were first predicted in 2012 by Nobel-prize winning physicist Frank Wilezek and his associate Al Shapere.

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The blueprint for time crystals was laid out by physicist Norman Yao at the University of California in Berkley. Last week he published a blueprint for time crystals in the journal of Physical Review Letters.

Time crystal are a new phase of matter, non-equilibrium matter, which scientists are starting to explore.

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Scientist have found that time crystals exhibit a symmetry breaking phenomenon, they are symmetrical in some direction but not symmetrical in all directions.

Time crystals are the manifestation of a system in its lowest energy state.

Creating Time Crystals

The creation of time crystals gives scientists a new way to study the process of symmetry-breaking and examining the laws of physics behind the symmetry-breaking process.

Theoretical Time Crystal recipe:

• Start with a quantum system such as a group of ion arrange in a ring
• Cool the ions until the ions reach their lowest energy state
  At this point according to the laws of physics the ring of ions should be perfectly stationary
• Next, break the time symmetry
  Now the ring varies periodically in time, i.e., it rotates

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This is because the repeating motion in time is a manifestation of the temporal symmetry-breaking, just as repeating patterns in spatial dimensions are a manifestation of spatial symmetry-breaking.

But the theoretical "shake-n-bake" method is not so easy in the real world. That's because the spatial appearance of quantum particles are governed by the laws of probability.

The team of scientists at the University of Maryland used Anderson localization to their recipe to cause the quantum particles to appear in a single location. They created a time crystal using 10 ytterbium ions.

The team of scientists at Harvard University created their time crystal using tightly packed nitrogen vacancy centers in diamonds. Nitrogen vacancy centers are the holes left behind when nitrogen atoms are systematically removed.

Application for Time Crystals

Because time crystals mimic the qubit information bits researchers think time crystals could be used in quantum computing systems.

Sources and Full Articles

Presenting time crystals, physics' newest material, UPI, 26 January 2017

Discrete Time Crystals: Rigidity, Criticality, and Realizations, Physical Review Letters, 18 January 2017

Physicists Create World’s First Time Crystal, MIT Review, 4 October 2016

How to Build A Space-Time Crystal, MIT Review, 26 June 2012

Scientists obtain evidence of many-body localization in a closed quantum system, 8 July 2016

Programmable ions set the stage for general-purpose quantum computers, PHYS.ORG, 3 August 2016

SteemIt Author's Notes

We live at a truly awesome time where it seems science fiction is becoming reality.

It is amazing what you find and learn when you dig into an article. While I attempted to explain the information in "general audience" terms, I found that some of the information deserves a far more in depth explanation. I encourage those interested to read the "sources and full articles" to gain a better understanding of the science.

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