Prethermal discrete time crystals in one-dimensional classical Floquet systems with nearest-neighbor interactions

Abstract: Prethermal discrete time crystals (PDTCs), an emergent non-equilibrium phase of matter, have been studied in two- and higher-dimensional lattices with nearest-neighbor (NN) interactions and one-dimensional (1D) lattices with long-range interactions. However, different from prethermalization that can be observed in 1D Floquet classical spin systems with NN interactions, classical PDTCs in Floquet 1D systems with only NN interactions have not been proposed before. Here, we demonstrate the emergence of disorder-free PDTCs in 1D Floquet classic spin systems with NN interactions. We show that the thermalization time grows exponentially as the driving frequency increases and depends on the energy density of the initial state, which are two key signatures of PDTCs. The robustness of 1D classical PDTC order is verified by introducing imperfect spin flip operations. The emergence of 1D classical PDTCs can be explained by mapping the 1D classical spin chain with NN interacting to a quantum spin-half system with effective long-range interactions. Our work provides an exploration of quantum characteristics, when considering the classical counterparts of quantum phenomena, and will be helpful for further investigations of both classical and quantum prethermal systems and discrete time-crystalline order.