Physicists have created a system of two connected time crystals, which are strange quantum systems that are stuck in an endless loop. The physicists hope to use the technology to build a quantum computer.
Samuli Autti, the lead scientist on the project from Lancaster University in the UK, told Live Science in an email that it was a rare privilege to explore a completely novel phase of matter.
The ice in a cocktail and the diamonds in jewelry are all normal crystals. The normal symmetries of nature are broken by crystals.
Symmetric laws of physics can be found through space. The fundamental equations of gravity or electromagnetism apply equally to the entire universe. They work in many different directions. The results of a laboratory experiment should be the same regardless of the degree of rotation.
This beautiful symmetry is broken in a crystal. A repeating spatial structure is created by the arrangement of the molecule of a crystal. Physicists use the term "spontaneous symmetry breaking" to refer to the fact that the fundamental laws of physics are not always symmetrical.
The laws of physics have a time symmetry according to physicist Frank Wilczek. Experiments should produce the same result if they are repeated again. In the dimensions of time, Wilczek dubbed this symmetry breaking through time a time crystal. Physicists built one a few years later.
A time crystal keeps repeating itself in time in the absence of external encouragement. The time crystal is in a low energy state. The time crystal is stuck because of the basic rules of quantum mechanics.
Autti said that they are impossible.
A coffee cup sitting out will always cool, a pendulum will stop swinging, and the ball will come to rest. The rules of thermodynamics don't seem to apply to a time crystal. Quantum mechanics governs the zoo of subatomic particles.
If we keep our eyes closed and observe the motion, it will only slow down if we interact with the crystals.
Physicists can't see time crystals. The quantum rules that allow them to exist break down when they attempt to watch one. Any interaction with the outside environment that breaks down the quantum state of the time crystal will stop it from being a time crystal.
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Autti's team came in to try to find a way to interact with a quantum time crystal. It's quantum physics at the smallest scale. The rules of classical mechanics give a better description of bugs and cats.
It is difficult to understand the continuum from quantum physics to classical physics. One of the great mysteries of modern physics is how one becomes another. There are time crystals between the two worlds. We could learn how to remove the interface by studying time crystals.
Autti and his team built their time crystal using magnons. Quasiparticles emerge in the collective state of a group of atoms called magnons. The team of physicists cooled the atom to within a tenth of a degree above absolute zero. The Bose-Einstein condensate is a state where all the atoms share a common quantum state.
Waves of magnetic energy, the magnons, were generated by all the spins of the electrons in the helium 3. The waves made a time crystal.
Two groups of magnons were brought close enough to influence each other by Autti's team. The system of magnons had two different states.
Autti's team wants to clarify the relationship between quantum and classical physics. Their goal is to build time crystals that interact with their environments without the quantum states disintegrating, allowing the time crystal to keep running. The motion of a time crystal isn't free energy but it could be used for quantum computing
The basis for computation can be found in having two states. In classical computer systems, the basic unit of information is a bit, which can take either a 0 or 1 state, while in quantum computing, eachqubit can be in more than one place at the same time.
It's possible that time crystals can be used as a building block for quantum devices that work outside the lab. The two-level system we have now created is a basic building block.
While this work is far away from a quantum computer, it does open up new avenues of research. If scientists can manipulate the two-time-crystal system without destroying its quantum states, they could potentially build larger systems of time crystals.
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