Professor Junichi Isotani, Intellectual Community Infrastructure Research Center, University of Tsukuba, Dr. Shinobu Onoda, Quantum Science and Technology Research and Development Organization, Dr. Hitoshi Tsunoya of Sumitomo Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. Through joint research with such groups, we have produced diamond crystals with the world's highest concentration of room temperature quantum spins, and announced that we have succeeded in observing the room temperature of "time crystals".
Liquids and gases have "continuous translational symmetry" in which they do not change even if they move from one point to another with a uniform density.In addition, a crystal in which atoms are regularly arranged has "discrete translational symmetry" in which it becomes indistinguishable from the original state when it moves for each unit fat.For example, turning water into ice breaks continuous translational symmetry and causes a phase change to discrete translational symmetry.On the other hand, time is also considered to have continuous translational symmetry, but the existence of a "time crystal" that breaks it and has discrete translational symmetry has been discussed, but it has not been proved.
In this study, we succeeded in observing discrete time crystal formation using about 100 million quantum electron spin means that have both strong interaction and irregularity in diamond crystals.The product produced at this time was produced by high-temperature electron beam irradiation technology, and contains the NV center formed by nitrogen and vacancies in diamond at the world's highest concentration of 5 nm on average.
In the future, it is expected to be applied to the quantum memory of quantum computing and the improvement of the accuracy of quantum measurement.
