A research group at University of Melbourne has been able to observe a time crystal in action, for the very first time.
Time crystals are actually a unique arrangement of particles that are in perpetual and repeating motion in both time and space. While time crystals have been observed before using different techniques, last year a team of over 100 people from Google and a number of universities became the first to create a time crystal using a quantum computer, publishing their achievement in Nature in November.
Time crystals are important because they are a new phase of matter: instead of being in equilibrium or a steady state, they are forever switching between states. In addition, they come very close to challenging the laws of physics by being in perpetual motion. They constitute almost a violation of the laws of physics that otherwise suggests that energy of motion will always dissipate in a process where entropy (a measure of disorder in a system) increases.
Building a time crystal, however, is tricky. To avoid thermalization, the individual components of a time crystal must be isolated from the environment; otherwise, thermal vibrations would always destroy the time crystal system.
Like time crystals, quantum computers use unique systems of particles to create a quantum state that can be used to process data. Various prototypes have so far been built by different companies and organizations, but one common technique used to isolate the fragile quantum state is to keep it at an extremely low temperature.
The researchers decided to use an IBM quantum computer.
While the quantum simulation on quantum computers is still somewhat “noisy” with imperfections or interference, the team was still able to observe a time crystal in which the configuration of qubits kept repeating.
Since the configuration keeps repeating, the system will never lose its memory. That is, it never forgets this initial state. It means time crystals might constitute a perfect quantum memory device. (TechXplore)
The results has been published in Science Advances.
