Time-crystalline Topological Superconductors

Abstract

Time crystals form when arbitrary physical states of a periodically driven system spontaneously break discrete time-translation symmetry. We introduce one-dimensional time-crystalline topological superconductors, for which time-translation symmetry breaking and topological physics intertwine---yielding anomalous Floquet Majorana modes that are not possible in free-fermion systems. Such a phase exhibits a bulk magnetization that returns to its original form after two drive periods, together with Majorana end modes that recover their initial form only after four drive periods. We propose experimental implementations and detection schemes for this new state.

arXiv comment10 pages, 7 figures

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Photonic Floquet time crystals
• Floquet engineering bulk odd-frequency superconducting pairs
• Higgs time crystal in a high-$T_c$ superconductor
• Universal presence of time-crystalline phases and period-doubling oscillations in one-dimensional Floquet topological insulators
• Imaginary time crystal of thermal quantum matter
• Unitary Subharmonic Response and Floquet Majorana Modes
• Route to Extend the Lifetime of a Discrete Time Crystal in a Finite Spin Chain Without Disorder
• Topologically protected boundary discrete time crystal for a solvable model
• Topologically ordered time crystals