Time crystals are special quantum systems that exhibit periodicity in time, just as crystalline materials are periodic in space. Since 2012, when they were first proposed theoretically, several groups have built experimental systems that demonstrate key characteristics of time crystals, but these results lacked a method to generally stabilize the time crystalline phase. An international team of researchers has now gone beyond previous experiments by creating a type of time crystal known as a discrete time crystal (DTC) out of a chain of programmable spin quantum bits (qubits). The new system exhibits a phenomenon known as many-body localization that prevents the DTC from heating up and thermalizing and is considered a “smoking gun” that demonstrates its status as a genuine time crystal.
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