Re:Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal
by Steel_Phoenix on Sunday May 06, 2018 @11:40AM
(#17006791)
Is the timing of the crystal influenced by its size, shape, or composition? Does it just double whatever the input signal is, or do you have to find a particular resonant frequency?
If you brought a ticking crystal into contact with one that was not, or was ticking at a different frequency, would there be transfer or loss? If you just charge up a corner of a crystal, does it extend to the rest?
Can you look for ticking in crystals you haven't charged, and if so, are they readable long enough to be used for dating or information storage?
We're working on understanding possible applications now, and we also wonder whether this is a more commonly available phenomenon than originally thought. As experimentalists, we're very conservative in our claims -- for instance, we explain our observation of the "DTC signature" specifically proposed by theorists, without making claims as to the final interpretation of the results for the existing theory. Instead, our job is to very clearly explain what we did and what resulted, and then we get to see (and in some ways participate in) how the broader condensed matter community comes to understand the phenomena. It's an exciting position to be in, there are still many interesting unknowns!