Experimental progress towards a prethermal discrete time crystal*

Driven quantum systems offer opportunities for studying novel phases of non-equilibrium matter, such as time crystals [1,2,3]. To avoid continuously absorbing energy from the drive, we investigate a strategy based on Floquet prethermalization. In this case, even without disorder, one can observe a slow heating time scale with exponential dependence on the drive frequency, leading to a long-lived intermediate "prethermal" regime. We use a trapped-ion quantum simulator with chains of Yb ions confined in a rf Paul trap that realize a transverse field Ising model with tunable range interactions. By varying the initial state and drive parameters of our system, we characterize this prethermal regime. [1] F. Wilczek, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 160401 (2012) [2] J. Zhang et al. Observation of a discrete time crystal. Nature 543, 217-220 (2017) [3] S. Choi et al. Observation of discrete time-crystalline order in a disordered dipolar many-body system. Nature 543, 221-225 (2017)