{"id":208747,"date":"2025-03-15T05:17:15","date_gmt":"2025-03-15T10:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/a-new-type-of-time-crystal"},"modified":"2025-03-15T05:17:15","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T10:17:15","slug":"a-new-type-of-time-crystal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/a-new-type-of-time-crystal","title":{"rendered":"A New Type of Time Crystal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-new-type-of-time-crystal.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Time crystals realized in the so-called quasiperiodic regime hold promise for future applications in quantum computing and sensing.<\/p>\n<p>In ordinary crystals, atoms or molecules form a repeating pattern in space. By extension, in quantum systems known as time crystals, particles form a repeating pattern in both space and time. These exotic systems were predicted in 2012 and first demonstrated in 2016 (see <a target=\"xrefwindow\" href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v10\/5\" id=\"d5e101\">Viewpoint: How to Create a Time Crystal<\/a>). Now Chong Zu at Washington University in St. Louis and his colleagues have experimentally realized a new form of time crystal called a discrete-time quasicrystal [<a href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v18\/s28#c1\" class=\"\">1<\/a>]. The team suggests that such states could be useful for high-precision sensing and advanced signal processing.<\/p>\n<p>Conventional time crystals are created by subjecting a collection of particles to an external driving force that is periodic in time. Zu and his colleagues instead selected a quasiperiodic drive in the form of a structured but nonrepeating sequence of microwave pulses. The researchers applied this quasiperiodic drive to an ensemble of strongly interacting spins associated with structural defects, known as nitrogen-vacancy centers, in diamond. They then tracked the resulting dynamics of these spins using a laser microscope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time crystals realized in the so-called quasiperiodic regime hold promise for future applications in quantum computing and sensing. In ordinary crystals, atoms or molecules form a repeating pattern in space. By extension, in quantum systems known as time crystals, particles form a repeating pattern in both space and time. These exotic systems were predicted in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,48,1617,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}