Dissipative Time Quasicrystals from Multilevel Interference

Abstract

Boundary time crystals exhibit spontaneous breaking of continuous time-translation symmetry through persistent periodic oscillations in driven-dissipative many-body systems. Here, we show that multilevel interference provides a natural route beyond periodic order, enabling dissipative time quasicrystals without externally imposed quasiperiodic driving. We consider a collectively driven-dissipative four-level ensemble with two degenerate excited states and two degenerate ground states. In the thermodynamic limit, the exact mean-field dynamics reduces to an irrational flow on a two-dimensional torus, yielding quasiperiodic order parameters with discrete spectra generated by two incommensurate fundamental frequencies. Vanishing maximal Lyapunov exponents demonstrate that the nonlinear self-consistent dynamics remains nonchaotic. Our results establish a minimal interference-induced mechanism for time-quasiperiodic order and open a route toward higher-dimensional quasiperiodic dynamics in multilevel systems.