Revision 2

Accepted · cosmetic change · record

Changes against revision 1:

Title · changed: Revision 1: Is the many-body-localized time crystal a stable phase; Revision 2: Is the many-body-localized time crystal a stable phase?
Plain: Time crystals protected by disorder-induced localization were predicted to last forever in large systems. Since localization itself may fail in large systems, the time crystal may only be very long-lived.
Precise: For the disordered periodically driven Ising chain (near-perfect $\pi$ spin flips plus random Ising couplings, fields and generic perturbations), does the period-doubled response persist for infinite time as $L \to \infty$, or is its lifetime finite but parametrically long? Answer yes or no, with the lifetime scaling if no.
Settled by: A determination, by numerics or proof, of the stability of Floquet many-body localization against avalanches in this model.
Kind: well-posed
Answer type: yes-no
References: (empty)
Literature status: contested
Status note: Eigenstate order was observed on a 20-qubit processor (Mi et al., Nature 2022); infinite-time stability depends on the unresolved stability of MBL against avalanches.
Posed since: 2016

Decisions