Discrete Time-Crystalline Order in Cavity and Circuit QED Systems

Discrete time crystals are a recently proposed and experimentally observed out-of-equilibrium dynamical phase of Floquet systems, where the stroboscopic dynamics of a local observable repeats itself at an integer multiple of the driving period. We address this issue in a driven-dissipative setup, focusing on the modulated open Dicke model, which can be implemented by cavity or circuit QED systems. In the thermodynamic limit, we employ semiclassical approaches and find rich dynamical phases on top of the discrete time-crystalline order. In a deep quantum regime with few qubits, we find clear signatures of a transient discrete time-crystalline behavior, which is absent in the isolated counterpart. We establish a phenomenology of dissipative discrete time crystals by generalizing the Landau theory of phase transitions to Floquet open systems.