Discrete time crystals in disordered anisotropic Heisenberg chains

Abstract:A discrete time crystal is an out-of-equilibrium phase of matter characterized by the spontaneous breaking of discrete time-translation symmetry. Using extensive numerical simulations based on matrix-product-state methods, we provide evidence for discrete time-crystalline behavior in strongly disordered spin chains with Heisenberg interactions, including the isotropic point, subject to periodic driving. Starting from a many-body localized regime, we observe that rotations induced by delta kicks produce a pronounced subharmonic response at half the drive frequency in spin observables. We investigate the stability of this response against rotation-angle errors through entanglement entropy, quantum Fisher information, short-range spin correlations, and restricted-control ergotropy. Increasing the rotation error reveals an intermediate dynamical regime separating the time-crystalline and Floquet-localized responses. In this regime, most observables exhibit signatures of weakly correlated dynamics reminiscent of Anderson localization.

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el); Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph)

arXiv:2609.04037 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2609.04037v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.04037 arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)