Absence of temporal order in states with spatial correlation decay

Abstract

In quantum lattice systems, we prove that any stationary state with power-law (or even exponential) decay of spatial correlations has vanishing macroscopic temporal order in the thermodynamic limit. Assuming translational invariance, we obtain a similar bound on the temporal order between local operators at late times. Our proofs do not require any locality of the Hamiltonian. Applications in quantum time crystals are briefly discussed.