Fate of a discrete time crystal in an open system

Abstract

The theoretical suggestion and the subsequent experimental evidence for the existence of discrete time crystals (DTCs) constitutes one of the most exciting recent fundamental advances in out-of-equilibrium (OOE) quantum physics. These are OOE phases in which time translation symmetry is spontaneously broken alongside the symmetry breaking familiar from static equilibrium systems. In this work, the authors study the fragility of this phenomenon by considering the effect of an external environment on the $\ensuremath{\pi}$ spin glass, the paradigmatic model of a disordered DTC, which had hitherto only been considered in completely isolated systems.