DARPA Is Funding Time Crystal Research
The DoD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, announced a new program to fund research on these systems. More generally, the new DRINQS program will study exactly what its acronym stands for: “Driven and Nonequilibrium Quantum Systems.” But why?
“The applications could be for atomic clocks, where you have an ensemble of atoms you’re vibrating to extract time information,” Ale Lukaszew, program manager in DARPA’s defense sciences offices, told Gizmodo. “There might be applications related to measuring things with exquisite sensitivity in time and magnetic field domains. Not a lot of these applications are open for discussion.” In other words, time crystal-based military technology is classified.
Despite their name, time crystals are relatively easy to understand. Their atoms have an innate property called spin, which turns each one into the smallest possible bar magnets. Time crystals are systems of atoms with a regularly pulsing force, like an electric field, acting on them. This force causes the spins to swap directions regularly. Except the spin’s ticking need not align with the field’s pulsing.
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