Topological Boundary Time Crystal Oscillations
Summarize this article with:
Quantum Physics arXiv:2602.17765 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 19 Feb 2026] Title:Topological Boundary Time Crystal Oscillations Authors:Dominik Nemeth, Ahsan Nazir, Alessandro Principi, Robert-Jan Slager View a PDF of the paper titled Topological Boundary Time Crystal Oscillations, by Dominik Nemeth and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Boundary time crystals (BTCs) break time-translation symmetry and exhibit long-lived, robust oscillations insensitive to initial conditions. We show that collective spin BTCs can admit emergent topological winding numbers in operator space. Expanding the density operator in a spherical tensor basis, we map the Lindblad dynamics onto an effective local hopping problem, where collective degrees of freedom label sites of an emergent two-dimensional operator space lattice and identify topological obstructions that enforce the delocalization of operator modes on the lattice. The resulting spectral delocalization provides a natural explanation for the robust oscillatory dynamics observed in BTCs. When combined with non-reciprocal transport of operator weight across operator space, this mechanism moreover also leads to the universality of long-time dynamics across a broad class of initial states. Our results frame BTC dynamics as a form of topologically constrained operator space transport and suggest a close connection to non-Hermitian skin-effects. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall); Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) Cite as: arXiv:2602.17765 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2602.17765v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.17765 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Dominik Nemeth [view email] [v1] Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:00:17 UTC (10,416 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Topological Boundary Time Crystal Oscillations, by Dominik Nemeth and 3 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-02 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.mes-hall cond-mat.other References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)