Prolonging a discrete time crystal by quantum-classical feedback

Abstract

Nonequilibrium phases of quantum matter featuring time crystalline eigenstate order have been realized recently on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. While ideal quantum time crystals exhibit collective subharmonic oscillations and spatiotemporal long-range order persisting for infinite times, the decoherence time of current NISQ devices sets a natural limit to the survival of these phases, restricting their observation to a shallow quantum circuit. Here we propose a time-periodic scheme that leverages quantum-classical feedback protocols in subregions of the system to enhance a time crystal signal significantly exceeding the decoherence time of the device. As a case of study, we demonstrate the survival of the many-body localized discrete time crystal phase in the one-dimensional periodically kicked Ising model, accounting for decoherence of the system with an environment. Based on classical simulation of quantum circuit realizations we find that this approach is suitable for implementation on existing quantum hardware and presents a prospective path to simulate complex quantum many-body dynamics that transcend the low depth limit of current digital quantum computers. Published by the American Physical Society 2024