Only starting with Go 1.23 unreferenced and unstopped time.Ticker will be garbage collected.

Since the min. Go version of this project is Go 1.20, you should call defer ticker.Stop(). Otherwise, this will leak the ticker.

In both cases, the changed code does not behave the same as the original one: time.Ticker publishes in a defined Interval $I$. You have to reset the ticker every time you start the next "cycle. "Otherwise, the timeout you're waiting for may be shorter than expected.

Thank you for your suggestions! : )
I'll fix it!

About Go version
As you said, using time.After in Go 1.23 and later versions does not cause memory leaks, but this project is using Go 1.20.

About ticker or timer
The ticker sends values to the channel at a fixed rate. If the task execution time is longer than the ticker interval, the next task will start immediately after the previous task finished.
But the timer can be reset after the task has finished. No matter how long the previous task is running, the next task will start after the interval.