ABSTRACT
Spontaneous symmetry breaking underlies much of our classification of phases of matter and their associated transitions1-3. The nature of the underlying symmetry being broken determines many of the qualitative properties of the phase; this is illustrated by the case of discrete versus continuous symmetry breaking. Indeed, in contrast to the discrete case, the breaking of a continuous symmetry leads to the emergence of gapless Goldstone modes controlling, for instance, the thermodynamic stability of the ordered phase4,5. Here, we realize a two-dimensional dipolar XY model that shows a continuous spin-rotational symmetry using a programmable Rydberg quantum simulator. We demonstrate the adiabatic preparation of correlated low-temperature states of both the XY ferromagnet and the XY antiferromagnet. In the ferromagnetic case, we characterize the presence of a long-range XY order, a feature prohibited in the absence of long-range dipolar interaction. Our exploration of the many-body physics of XY interactions complements recent works using the Rydberg-blockade mechanism to realize Ising-type interactions showing discrete spin rotation symmetry6-9.
ABSTRACT
The crystallographic symmetry of time-periodic phenomena has been extended to include time inversion. The properties of such spatio-temporal crystallographic point groups with time translations and time inversion are derived and one representative group from each of the 343 types has been tabulated. In addition, stereographic symmetry and general-position diagrams are given for each representative group. These groups are also given a notation consisting of a short Hermann-Mauguin magnetic point-group symbol with each spatial operation coupled with its associated time translation.
