Continuous Space-Time Crystal State Driven by Nonreciprocal Optical Forces

Abstract

Continuous time crystals (CTCs) - media with broken continuous time translation symmetry - are an eagerly sought state of matter that spontaneously transition from a time-independent state to one of periodic motion in response to a small perturbation. The state has been realized recently in an array of nanowires decorated with plasmonic metamolecules illuminated with light. Here we show that this as-yet-unexplained CTC state can be understood as arising from a nonreciprocal phase transition induced by nonconservative radiation pressure forces among plasmonic metamolecules: above a certain intensity threshold, light drives the inhomogeneously broadened array of thermally-driven noisy nanowire oscillators to a synchronized coherent space-time crystal state and ergodicity of the system is broken. At the onset of synchronization, this mechanism does not require nonlinearity in the oscillators but depends instead on nonreciprocal forces. As such it is fundamentally different from the regimes of synchronization that depend on nonlinearity.

arXiv comment7 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Demonstration of a Tunable Non-Hermitian Nonlinear Microwave Dimer
• Breaking of Time Translation Symmetry and Ergodicity, and Entropy decrease in a Continuous Time Crystal Driven by Nonreciprocal Optical Forces
• More is less in unpercolated active solids