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A German-Polish collaboration was able to make the first video recording of a space-time crystal. The structure of the recurring material was micrometric in size and at room temperature, and is a step forward in the search for applications for these curious objects.
A crystal is by definition a material whose constituents are arranged in a lattice, a very ordered microscopic structure. A time crystal is the same but the order is not seen in space but rather in time. The structure changes and oscillates to periodically return to a specific configuration.
Put the two together and you get a Space-Time Crystal. The one in the study, published in Physical Review Letters, was created using a strip of permalloy (an iron-nickel alloy) and placed on a tiny antenna through which they sent a radio frequency current.
This process produced specific excitation states in the electrons of this material. These behave like a particle (although they are not), so they are called the magnon quasi-particle. The magnons of this material can be seen periodically entering and leaving their arrangement in space and time: a space-time crystal par excellence.
“We were able to show that these spatio-temporal crystals are much more robust and widespread than first thought,” said co-lead author Pawel Gruszecki, a scientist at the Faculty of Physics at Adam Mickiewicz University. in Poznań, in a statement. “Our crystal condenses at room temperature and particles can interact with it – unlike an isolated system. Plus, it grew to a size that could be used to do something with this magnonic space-time crystal. This can lead to many potential applications. “
What was extremely exciting was that their space-time crystal was able to interact with other magnons launched into the system by the researchers. Two crystals of time have recently been made to interact, but this is the first time that we have examined the interaction of quasi-particles with a space-time crystal.
“We took the steadily recurring pattern of magnons in space and time, sent more magnons and they eventually dispersed. So we were able to show that the time crystal can interact with other quasi-particles. was able to show it again – directly in an experiment, let alone in a video, ”explained other co-lead author Nick Träger, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.
Crystals are useful in a wide variety of technologies, so there is a lot of interest in how temporal crystal structures could be used for communication or imaging technologies.
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