Critical behavior of a programmable time-crystal lattice gas

Time crystals are many-body systems whose ground state spontaneously breaks time-translation symmetry and thus exhibits long-range spatiotemporal order and robust periodic motion. Using hydrodynamics, we have recently shown how an m-th-order external packing field coupled to density fluctuations in driven diffusive fluids can induce the spontaneous emergence of time-crystalline order in the form of m rotating condensates, which can be further controlled and modulated. Here, we analyze this phenomenon at the microscopic level in a paradigmatic model of particle diffusion under exclusion interactions, a generalization of the weakly asymmetric simple exclusion process with a configuration-dependent field called the time-crystal lattice gas. Using extensive Monte Carlo simulations, we characterize the nonequilibrium phase transition to these complex time-crystal phases for different values of m, including the order parameter, the susceptibility, and the Binder cumulant, from which we measure the critical exponents, which turn out to be within the Kuramoto universality class for oscillator synchronization. We also elucidate the condensate density profiles and velocities, confirming along the way a scaling property predicted for the higher-order condensate shapes in terms of first-order ones, discussing also some possibilities for this promising route to time crystals.