A Step Toward Practical Time Crystals

Recent research by teams at UC Riverside, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, OEwaves, and others, has demonstrated an optical platform for discrete time crystals that runs at room temperature in a compact, chip-friendly format. The system uses two self-injection-locked lasers pumping a Kerr nonlinear microresonator. A beat note between the lasers creates a periodic background, and—under suitable tuning of power and frequency—stable soliton pulse trains emerge that oscillate at integer multiples of that beat frequency, breaking the time-translation symmetry of the system.

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Importantly, these time crystals are dissipative and continuously driven, so they don’t require exotic cryogenic or ion-trapping setups. Because the resonator materials and techniques are compatible with microfabrication, this work moves time crystals from lab curiosities toward devices that might be used for precision signal generation, metrology, and timing in fielded systems.

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