Photonic Metamaterial Analogue of a Continuous Time Crystal
| Autor: | Liu, Tongjun, Ou, Jun-Yu, MacDonald, Kevin F., Zheludev, Nikolay I. |
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| Rok vydání: | 2022 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Nature Physics, 19, 986 (2023) |
| Druh dokumentu: | Working Paper |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41567-023-02023-5 |
| Popis: | Time crystals are an eagerly sought phase of matter with broken time-translation symmetry. Quantum time crystals with discretely broken time-translation symmetry have been demonstrated in trapped ions, atoms and spins while continuously broken time-translation symmetry has been observed in an atomic condensate inside an optical cavity. Here we report that a classical metamaterial nanostructure, a two-dimensional array of plasmonic metamolecules supported on flexible nanowires, can be driven to a state possessing all of the key features of a continuous time crystal: continuous coherent illumination by light resonant with the metamolecules' plasmonic mode triggers a spontaneous phase transition to a superradiant-like state of transmissivity oscillations, resulting from many-body interactions among the metamolecules, characterized by long-range order in space and time. The phenomenon is of interest to the study of dynamic classical many-body states in the strongly correlated regime and applications in all-optical modulation, frequency conversion and timing. Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures |
| Databáze: | arXiv |
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