Discrete Time-Crystalline Response Stabilized by Domain-Wall Confinement

Abstract

Discrete time crystals represent a paradigmatic nonequilibrium phase of periodically driven matter. Protecting its emergent spatiotemporal order necessitates a mechanism that hinders the spreading of defects, such as localization of domain walls in disordered quantum spin chains. In this work, we establish the effectiveness of a different mechanism arising in clean spin chains: the confinement of domain walls into "mesonic"bound states. We consider translationally invariant quantum Ising chains periodically kicked at arbitrary frequency, and we discuss two possible routes to domain-wall confinement: longitudinal fields and interactions beyond nearest neighbors. We study the impact of confinement on the order-parameter evolution by constructing domain-wall-conserving effective Hamiltonians and analyzing the resulting dynamics of domain walls. On the one hand, we show that for arbitrary driving frequency, the symmetry-breaking-induced confining potential gets effectively averaged out by the drive, leading to deconfined dynamics. On the other hand, we rigorously prove that increasing the range R of spin-spin interactions Ji,j beyond nearest neighbors enhances the order-parameter lifetime exponentially in R. Our theory predictions are corroborated by a combination of exact and matrix-product-state simulations for finite and infinite chains, respectively. The long-lived stability of spatiotemporal order identified in this work does not rely on Floquet prethermalization nor on eigenstate order, but rather on the nonperturbative origin of vacuum-decay processes. We point out the experimental relevance of this new mechanism for stabilizing a long-lived time-crystalline response in Rydberg-dressed spin chains.