Stability of time-crystalline dynamics in open systems

Investigate the stability of time-crystalline dynamics in open systems subject to dissipation and decoherence, extending the disordered anisotropic Heisenberg-chain framework beyond isolated-system dynamics.

Background

The paper studies discrete time-crystalline behavior in a strongly disordered one-dimensional XXZ Heisenberg chain driven by periodic global spin rotations, using matrix-product-state simulations for an isolated quantum system. Its results identify a robust period-doubled response and an intermediate weakly correlated regime under rotation-angle errors.

The conclusions explicitly identify open systems as an important direction for future work. The unresolved issue is whether the observed time-crystalline dynamics remain stable when environmental dissipation and decoherence are included, potentially using matrix-product-state methods.

References

Building on these results, an important direction for future work is to extend this framework to open systems, where MPS-based numerical methods could be used to investigate the stability of time-crystalline dynamics against dissipation and decoherence.

— Discrete time crystals in disordered anisotropic Heisenberg chains  (2609.04037 - Formicola et al., 3 Sep 2026) in Section Conclusions