Time Quasicrystals, Conformal Quasicrystals, and Holography

by Dr Felix Flicker (Oxford University)

Monday 8 Jun 2020, 16:00 → 17:00 Asia/Shanghai

ONLINE

Abstract

Recent experiments established the existence of (discrete) 'time crystals'. This new state of matter spontaneously breaks the symmetry of a periodic driving by returning a period-doubled response, made stable to finite temperature by the local interactions of many degrees of freedom. In this talk I extend this concept to 'time quasilattices'. When driven periodically, these return an aperiodic response which can be constructed as a one-dimensional slice through a structure periodic in two dimensions of time. Using a result of Prof. Bai Lin Hao I identify the possible sequences which can appear, and identify them within the chaotic regime of nonlinear dynamical systems. I discuss the extensions which would be necessary to realise these symmetries as a new state of matter: a time quasicrystal.

In work with M. Dickens (Berkeley) and L. Boyle (Perimeter Institute) we demonstrate that these same 1D quasicrystalline sequences appear as the boundaries of regular tilings of 2D hyperbolic space. Tensor networks defined on the 2D tilings were recently proposed as a discretization of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Accordingly, we find that the 1D boundary quasicrystals exhibit a discretization of conformal invariance.

[1] F. Flicker, Time Quasilattices in Dissipative Dynamical Systems, SciPost Physics 5, 001 (2018)
[2] L. Zaporski and F. Flicker, Superconvergence of Topological Entropy in the Symbolic Dynamics of Substitution Sequences, SciPost Physics 7, 018 (2019)
[3] L. Boyle, M. Dickens, and F. Flicker, Conformal Quasicrystals and Holography, Physical Review X 10, 011009 (2020)

Biography

2005-10      MPhys, University of Oxford

2010-11      MSc, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

2011-15      PhD, University of Bristol (Supervisor: Prof. Jasper van Wezel)

2015-17      Lindemann Trust Fellow at UC Berkeley (Host: Prof. Joel Moore and Prof. Norman Yao (2016-2017))

2017-Present    Astor Junior Research Fellow of Physics, New College, University of Oxford

From 20 Oct      Lectureship position, Cardiff University and University of Bristol

 

Research topics: magnetic monopoles, charge order in low dimensional systems, quasicrystals, superconductivity, spin ice, spin glass… etc.

Chair

Prof. Chi Ming Yim

Host

TDLI

Division

Condensed Matter

Other information

Venue: TDLI Meeting Room 200

Here is the Zoom link if you prefer to join us remotely:
Meeting room: https://cernet.zoom.com.cn/j/65477200942