Exotic synchronization in continuous time crystals outside the symmetric subspace

Abstract

Exploring continuous time crystals (CTCs) within the symmetric subspace of spin systems has been a subject of intensive research in recent times. Thus far, the stability of the time-crystal phase outside the symmetric subspace in such spin systems has gone largely unexplored. Here, we investigate the effect of including the asymmetric subspaces on the dynamics of CTCs in a driven dissipative spin model. This results in multistability, and the dynamics becomes dependent on the initial state. Remarkably, this multistability leads to exotic synchronization regimes such as chimera states and cluster synchronization in an ensemble of coupled identical CTCs. Interestingly, it leads to other nonlinear phenomena such as oscillation death and signature of chaos.