Can a bright soliton model reveal a genuine time crystal for a finite number of bosons?

Abstract

We analyze time crystal effects in a finite system of bosons which form a bright soliton clump on the Aharonov-Bohm ring. In the large particle number limit, $N\to \infty$, this setup corresponds to the Wilczek model, where it is known that the time crystal behavior cannot be observed in the ground state of the system because a spontaneously formed soliton does not move. Here, we show that while the spontaneous formation of a moving soliton in the ground state can occur for $N<\infty$, the soliton decays before it makes a single revolution along the ring and the time crystal dynamics is impossible.

4 pages, 1 figure, version accepted for publication in EPL. This is an expanded version of our reply [arXiv:2010.00414] to the unpublished comment [arXiv:2008.10940] on Phys. Rev. Research 2, 032038(R) (2020)

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Cited by in corpus (4)

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• Many-body state and dynamic behaviour of the pair-correlation function of a small Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a ring potential