Classical time crystals.

We consider the possibility that classical dynamical systems display motion in their lowest-energy state, forming a time analogue of crystalline spatial order. Challenges facing that idea are identified and overcome. We display arbitrary orbits of an angular variable as lowest-energy trajectories for nonsingular Lagrangian systems. Dynamics within orbits of broken symmetry provide a natural arena for formation of time crystals. We exhibit models of that kind, including a model with traveling density waves.

• Publication year

  2012

• Venue

  Physical Review Letters

• Publication date

  2012-02-12

• Fields of study

  Materials Science, Mathematics, Physics, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.160402arXiv 1202.2537PMID 23215057
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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