Many-body localized discrete time crystal using Rydberg dressing

Time crystals are an example of non-equilibrium quantum many-body phases, and these phases have been demonstrated on noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) systems like superconducting circuits [1], nitrogen vacancy centers [2], dipolar systems [3] and trapped ions. Recently, a discrete time crystal using many-body localization was proposed, and demonstrated using superconducting qubits [1, 5]. [TA1] [AM2] We propose the implementation of a many-body localized discrete time crystal in a 1D array of qubits encoded in neutral atoms. We describe the implementation using time-periodic Floquet dynamics with alternating one-qubit rotations and two-qubit entanglers with spatial disorder. One-qubits gates are implemented using collective addressing of qubit states of the atoms and the two-qubit entanglers are implemented using the Van der Waals interactions between highly excited Rydberg states through adiabatic Rydberg dressing gates [6]. We analyze sources of imperfections and decoherence and discuss the implementation of the time crystal phase using contemporary experiments. We also show evidence towards a simple matrix product state description of the time crystal phase, suggesting that the many-body localized discrete time crystal may be an instance of a phenomenon that is both robust to noise and efficiently simulatable [TA3] [AM4] using classical computers.



[1] X. Mi, et. al., Nature 601, 531 (2022)

[2] S. Choi, et. al., Nature 543, 221-225 (2017)

[3] J. Rovny, et. al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 180603 (2018)

[4] J. Zhang, et. al., Nature 543, 217-220 (2017)

[5] M. Ippoliti, et. al., PRX Quantum 2, 030346 (2021)

[6] A. Mitra, et. al., Phys. Rev. A 101, 030301(R)