Discovery of new time crystals
A strange form of matter called a time crystal has recently appeared in two new locations. Scientists have created such a crystal in monoammonium phosphate, as reported in the May issue of Physical Review Letters, and another group has created it in a liquid medium containing star-shaped particles, this publication appeared in Physical Review.
Unlike other well-known examples, time crystal from monoammonium phosphate, it was made from a solid material with an ordered physical structure, i.e. traditional crystal. The rest of the materials from which time crystals have been formed so far have been disordered. Scientists first created time crystals in 2016. One of them was made of diamond with defects, the other was made using a chain of ytterbium ions.
Ordinary crystals such as salt and quartz are examples of three-dimensional, ordered spatial crystals. Their atoms form a repeating system known to scientists for decades. Time crystals are different. Their atoms periodically vibrate first in one direction and then in the other direction, excited by a pulsating magnetic force (resonance). It is called "tick».
The ticking in the time crystal is contained within a certain frequency, although the interacting pulses have a different resonance. For example, the atoms in the time crystals studied in one of last year's experiments rotated at a frequency of only half the frequency of the pulsations of the magnetic field acting on them.
Scientists say understanding time crystals could lead to improvements in atomic clocks, gyroscopes and magnetometers, and help create quantum technology. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced funding for research into one of the strangest scientific discoveries of recent years.
- told Gizmodo the head of the DARPA program, Dr. Rosa Alehanda Lukashev. The details of these studies are confidential, she said. One can only conclude that this is a new generation of atomic clocks, more convenient and stable than the complex laboratory facilities currently used. As you know, such timers are used in many important military systems, including, for example, GPS.
Nobel Prize Laureate Frank Wilczek
Before time crystals were actually discovered, they were conceived in theory. It was invented a few years ago by an American, Nobel laureate. Frank Wilczek. In short, his idea is to break symmetry, as is the case with phase transitions. However, in theoretical time crystals, symmetry would be broken not only in three spatial dimensions, but also in the fourth - in time. According to Wilczek's theory, temporal crystals have a repeating structure not only in space but also in time. The problem is that this implies the vibration of atoms in the crystal lattice, i.e. movement without power supplywhat was considered by physicists to be impossible and impossible.
While we still don't know the crystals the famed theorist wanted, and probably never will, in 2016 physicists at the University of Maryland and Harvard University built "discontinuous" (or discrete) time crystals. These are systems of atoms or ions that demonstrate collective and cyclic motion, behaving like a previously unknown new state of matter, resistant to the slightest perturbations.
Although not as unusual as Prof. Wilczek, the newly discovered time crystals are interesting enough to attract military interest. And it seems significant enough.
