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Quantum Dissipative Continuous Time Crystals

Felix Russo* and Thomas Pohl†

  • *Contact author: felix.russo@tuwien.ac.at
  • †Contact author: thomas.pohl@itp.tuwien.ac.at
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 110404 – Published 11 September, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/dc2s-94gv

Abstract

Continuous time crystals, i.e., nonequilibrium phases with a spontaneously broken continuous time-translational symmetry, have been studied and recently observed in the long time dynamics of open quantum systems. Here, we investigate a lattice of interacting three-level particles and find two distinct time-crystal phases that cannot be described within mean-field theory. Remarkably, one of them emerges only in the presence of correlations, upon accounting for beyond-mean-field effects. Our findings extend explorations of continuous time-translational symmetry breaking in dissipative systems beyond the classical phenomenology of periodic orbits in a low-dimensional nonlinear system. The proposed model applies directly to the laser-driven dynamics of interacting Rydberg states in neutral-atom arrays and suggests that the predicted time-crystal phases are observable in such experiments.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 110404– Published 11 September, 2025
  • Received 2 April 2025
  • Accepted 8 August 2025
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