In their ongoing efforts to push the boundaries of quantum possibilities, physicists in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis have created a new type of “time crystal,” a novel phase of matter that defies common perceptions of motion and time.
The WashU research team includes Kater Murch, the Charles M. Hohenberg Professor of Physics, Chong Zu, an assistant professor of physics, and Zu’s graduate students Guanghui He, Ruotian “Reginald” Gong, Changyu Yao and Zhongyuan Liu. Bingtian Ye, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University’s Norman Yao are also authors of the research, which was published in the prestigious journal Physical Review X.
The team experimentally realized a new form of time crystal called a discrete-time quasicrystal. Such states could be useful for high-precision sensing and advanced signal processing, according to an analysis published by the American Physical Society.
Read a Q&A about time crystals with the authors on the Ampersand website.
