In their continuous endeavors to explore the limits of quantum potential, scientists in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a fresh kind of “time crystal,” an unprecedented state of matter that challenges standard notions of movement and time.

The WashU research ensemble comprises Kater Murch, the Charles M. Hohenberg Professor of Physics, Chong Zu, an assistant professor of physics, along with Zu’s graduate researchers Guanghui He, Ruotian “Reginald” Gong, Changyu Yao, and Zhongyuan Liu. Bingtian Ye from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, together with Harvard University’s Norman Yao, also contributed to the study, published in the esteemed journal Physical Review X.

The team has successfully demonstrated a new variant of time crystal known as a discrete-time quasicrystal. These states may prove advantageous for high-accuracy sensing and sophisticated signal processing, as indicated by a study released by the American Physical Society.

Explore a Q&A regarding time crystals with the authors on the Ampersand website.

The article Crystallizing time was initially featured on The Source.