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Long-lived interacting phases of matter protected by multiple time-translation symmetries in quasiperiodically-driven systems

ORAL

Abstract

We show how a large family of interacting nonequilibrium phases of matter can arise from the presence of multiple time-translation symmetries, which occur by quasiperiodically driving an isolated quantum many-body system with two or more incommensurate frequencies. These phases are fundamentally different from those realizable in time-independent or periodically-driven (Floquet) settings. Focusing on high-frequency drives with smooth time-dependence, we rigorously establish general conditions for which these phases are stable in a parametrically long-lived `preheating' regime. We develop a formalism to analyze the effect of the multiple time-translation symmetries on the dynamics of the system, which we use to classify and construct explicit examples of the emergent phases. In particular, we discuss time quasi-crystals which spontaneously break the time-translation symmetries, as well as time-translation symmetry protected topological phases.

Presenters

  • Dominic Else

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT

Authors

  • Dominic Else

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT

  • Wen Wei Ho

    Department of Physics, Harvard University

  • Philipp Dumitrescu

    Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute, Simons Foundation