For the first time, physicists have captured an interesting case on video.
Using a scanning diffusion X-ray microscope, the research team has made time crystal oscillations out of magnons at room temperature. This, they said, is a major disruption in the study of time crystals.
“We were able to show that such space-time crystals are much stronger and wider than originally thought,” said physicist Pawel Gruszecki of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland.
“Our crystals at room temperature and particles can interact with it – unlike a remote system. Plus, it has reached a size that can be used to make something with this time-sized crystal. This could lead to many potential applications. “
Time crystals, sometimes called space-time crystals, which have not been proven to exist in recent years, are as interesting as the name suggests. They are very similar to ordinary crystals, but for added properties.
In regular crystals, the proportional atoms are arranged in a fixed three-dimensional grid structure – imagine the atomic surface of a diamond or quartz crystal. These repetitive tiles can vary in alignment, but within a particular shape they do not move around much: they only repeat spatially.
In time crystals, the atoms behave slightly differently. They open, spin first in one direction, and then the other. These oscillations – known as ‘ticks’ – are locked to a constant and specific frequency. So where a regular crystal structure repeats in space, in time crystals repeat in space and time.
To study time crystals, scientists often use Bose-Einstein ultra-cold condensates of magnon quasiparticles. Magnets are not real grains, but they involve accumulated excitation of electron spins – like a wave that passes through a rod of spins.
The research team led by Gruszecki and his colleague, physics doctoral student Nick Träger from the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Systems in Germany, did something different. They placed a strip of magnetic permalloy on an antenna through which they could transmit a radiofrequency current.
That current emitted an oscillating magnetic field on the strip, with magnetic waves traveling on it from each end; these waves stimulated the magnons in the strip, and then these moving magnons moved to a repetitive pattern.
“We took the constant pattern of magnons in space and time, added more magnons, and eventually dispersed,” Träger said. “Thus, we were able to show that the time crystal can interact with other quasiparticles. No one has been able to show this directly in an experiment, let alone in a video.”
The video above shows the face of a magnetic wave moving through the strip, filmed at up to 40 billion frames per second using a MAXYMUS X-ray microscope at the BESSY II synchrotron radiation facility at Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin in Germany.
Time crystals should be stable and sensible over long periods of time, because they – theoretically – oscillate at the lowest possible energy state. The team’s research shows that moving time crystals can be easily manipulated, opening up a new way of redesigning time crystals. This could open the case for a range of practical applications.
“Classical crystals have a wide range of applications,” said physicist Joachim Gräfe of the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Systems.
“Now, if crystals can interact not only in space but also in time, we will add another measure of potential applications. The potential for communication technology, radar or imaging very big. “
The research was published in Corporate Review Letters.