Floquet Hamiltonian Research Articles

Dynamics of one-dimensional quantum many-body systems in time-periodic linear potentials

We study a system of one-dimensional interacting quantum particles subjected to a time-periodic potential linear in space. After discussing the cases of driven one- and two-particles systems, we derive the analogous results for the many-particles case in presence of a general interaction two-body potential and the corresponding Floquet Hamiltonian. When the undriven model is integrable, the Floquet Hamitlonian is shown to be integrable too. We determine the micro-motion operator and the expression for a generic time evolved state of the system. We discuss various aspects of the dynamics of the system both at stroboscopic and intermediate times, in particular the motion of the center of mass of a generic wavepacket and its spreading over time. We also discuss the case of accelerated motion of the center of mass, obtained when the integral of the coeffcient strenght of the linear potential on a time period is non-vanishing, and we show that the Floquet Hamiltonian gets in this case an additional static linear potential. We also discuss the application of the obtained results to the Lieb-Liniger model.

Dynamical Enhancement of Symmetries in Many-Body Systems.

We construct a dynamical decoupling protocol for accurately generating local and global symmetries in general many-body systems. Multiple commuting and noncommuting symmetries can be created by means of a self-similar-in-time ("polyfractal") drive. The result is an effective Floquet Hamiltonian that remains local and avoids heating over exponentially long times. This approach can be used to realize a wide variety of quantum models, and nonequilibrium quantum phases.

Dynamics of the vacuum state in a periodically driven Rydberg chain

We study the dynamics of the periodically driven Rydberg chain starting from the state with zero Rydberg excitations (vacuum state denoted by $|0\rangle$) using a square pulse protocol in the high drive amplitude limit. We show, using exact diagonalization for finite system sizes ($L\le 26$), that the Floquet Hamiltonian of the system, within a range of drive frequencies which we chart out, hosts a set of quantum scars which have large overlap with the $|0\rangle$ state. These scars are distinct from their counterparts having high overlap with the maximal Rydberg excitation state ($|\mathbb{Z}_2\rangle$); they coexist with the latter class of scars and lead to persistent coherent oscillations of the density-density correlator starting from the $|0\rangle$ state. We also identify special drive frequencies at which the system undergoes perfect dynamic freezing and provide an analytic explanation for this phenomenon. Finally, we demonstrate that for a wide range of drive frequencies, the system reaches a steady state with sub-thermal values of the density-density correlator. The presence of such sub-thermal steady states, which are absent for dynamics starting from the $|\mathbb{Z}_2\rangle$ state, imply a weak violation of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis in finite sized Rydberg chains distinct from that due to the scar-induced persistent oscillations reported earlier. We conjecture that in the thermodynamic limit such states may exist as pre-thermal steady states that show anomalously slow relaxation. We supplement our numerical results by deriving an analytic expression for the Floquet Hamiltonian using a Floquet perturbation theory in the high amplitude limit which provides an analytic, albeit qualitative, understanding of these phenomena at arbitrary drive frequencies. We discuss experiments which can test our theory.

Out-of-equilibrium phase transitions induced by Floquet resonances in a periodically quench-driven XY spin chain

We consider the dynamics of an XY spin chain subjected to an external transverse field which is periodically quenched between two values. By deriving an exact expression of the Floquet Hamiltonian for this out-of-equilibrium protocol with arbitrary driving frequencies, we show how, after an unfolding of the Floquet spectrum, the parameter space of the system is characterized by alternations between local and non-local regions, corresponding respectively to the absence and presence of Floquet resonances. The boundary lines between regions are obtained analytically from avoided crossings in the Floquet quasi-energies and are observable as phase transitions in the synchronized state. The transient behaviour of dynamical averages of local observables similarly undergoes a transition, showing either a rapid convergence towards the synchronized state in the local regime, or a rather slow one exhibiting persistent oscillations in the non-local regime, where explicit decay coefficients are presented.

Entanglement measures and nonequilibrium dynamics of quantum many-body systems: A path integral approach

We present a path integral formalism for expressing matrix elements of the density matrix of a quantum many-body system between any two coherent states in terms of standard Matsubara action with periodic(anti-periodic) boundary conditions on bosonic(fermionic) fields. We show that this enables us to express several entanglement measures for bosonic/fermionic many-body systems described by a Gaussian action in terms of the Matsubara Green function. We apply this formalism to compute various entanglement measures for the two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model in the strong-coupling regime, both in the presence and absence of Abelian and non-Abelian synthetic gauge fields, within a strong coupling mean-field theory. In addition, our method provides an alternative formalism for addressing time evolution of quantum-many body systems, with Gaussian actions, driven out of equilibrium without the use of Keldysh technique. We demonstrate this by deriving analytical expressions of the return probability and the counting statistics of several operators for a class of integrable models represented by free Dirac fermions subjected to a periodic drive in terms of the elements of their Floquet Hamiltonians. We provide a detailed comparison of our method with the earlier, related, techniques used for similar computations, discuss the significance of our results, and chart out other systems where our formalism can be used.

Effective Floquet Hamiltonians for periodically driven twisted bilayer graphene

We derive effective Floquet Hamiltonians for twisted bilayer graphene driven by circularly polarized light in two different regimes beyond the weak-drive, high-frequency regime. First, we consider a driving protocol relevant for experiments with frequencies smaller than the bandwidth and weak amplitudes and derive an effective Hamiltonian, which through a symmetry analysis, provides analytical insight into the rich effects of the drive. We find that circularly polarized light at low frequencies can selectively decrease the strength of AA-type interlayer hopping while leaving the AB-type unaffected. Then, we consider the intermediate frequency and intermediate-strength drive regime. We provide a compact and accurate effective Hamiltonian which we compare with the Van Vleck expansion and demonstrate that it provides a significantly improved representation of the exact quasienergies. Finally, we discuss the effect of the drive on the symmetries, Fermi velocity, and the gap of the Floquet flat bands.

Collapse and revival of quantum many-body scars via Floquet engineering

The presence of quantum scars, athermal eigenstates of a many-body Hamiltonian with finite energy density, leads to absence of ergodicity and long-time coherent dynamics in closed quantum systems starting from simple initial states. Such non-ergodic coherent dynamics, where the system does not explore its entire phase space, has been experimentally observed in a chain of ultracold Rydberg atoms. We show, via study of a periodically driven Rydberg chain, that the drive frequency acts as a tuning parameter for several reentrant transitions between ergodic and non-ergodic regimes. The former regime shows rapid thermalization of correlation functions and absence of scars in the spectrum of the system's Floquet Hamiltonian. The latter regime, in contrast, has scars in its Floquet spectrum which control the long-time coherent dynamics of correlation functions. Our results open a new possibility of drive frequency-induced tuning between ergodic and non-ergodic dynamics in experimentally realizable disorder-free quantum many-body systems.

Higher order topological insulator via periodic driving

We theoretically investigate a periodically driven semimetal based on a square lattice. The possibility of engineering both Floquet Topological Insulator featuring Floquet edge states and Floquet higher order topological insulating phase, accommodating topological corner modes has been demonstrated starting from the semimetal phase, based on Floquet Hamiltonian picture. Topological phase transition takes place in the bulk quasi-energy spectrum with the variation of the drive amplitude where Chern number changes sign from $+1$ to $-1$. This can be attributed to broken time-reversal invariance ($\mathcal{T}$) due to circularly polarized light. When the discrete four-fold rotational symmetry ($\mathcal{C}_4$) is also broken by adding a Wilson mass term along with broken $\mathcal{T}$, higher order topological insulator (HOTI), hosting in-gap modes at all the corners, can be realized. The Floquet quadrupolar moment, calculated with the Floquet states, exhibits a quantized value of $ 0.5$ (modulo 1) identifying the HOTI phase. We also show the emergence of the {\it{dressed corner modes}} at quasi-energy $\omega/2$ (remnants of zero modes in the quasi-static high frequency limit), where $\omega$ is the driving frequency, in the intermediate frequency regime.

A quantum annealer with fully programmable all-to-all coupling via Floquet engineering

Quantum annealing is a promising approach to heuristically solving difficult combinatorial optimization problems. However, the connectivity limitations in current devices lead to an exponential degradation of performance on general problems. We propose an architecture for a quantum annealer that achieves full connectivity and full programmability while using a number of physical resources only linear in the number of spins. We do so by application of carefully engineered periodic modulations of oscillator-based qubits, resulting in a Floquet Hamiltonian in which all the interactions are tunable. This flexibility comes at the cost of the coupling strengths between qubits being smaller than they would be compared with direct coupling, which increases the demand on coherence times with increasing problem size. We analyze a specific hardware proposal of our architecture based on Josephson parametric oscillators. Our results show how the minimum-coherence-time requirements imposed by our scheme scale, and we find that the requirements are not prohibitive for fully connected problems with up to at least 1000 spins. Our approach could also have impact beyond quantum annealing, since it readily extends to bosonic quantum simulators, and would allow the study of models with arbitrary connectivity between lattice sites.

Floquet thermalisation in a Rydberg-blockaded atomic chain subject to a frequency-modulated drive

We report on numerical simulations demonstrating the emergence of stroboscopic thermalisation in a chain of atoms submitted to a laser field whose frequency is periodically modulated close to resonance with a transition towards a Rydberg state. We relate the conditions of equilibration of the Rydberg population to the spectrum of the Floquet Hamiltonian and suggest a possible experimental implementation.

Generating quantum multicriticality in topological insulators by periodic driving

We demonstrate that the prototypical two-dimensional Chern insulator hosts exotic quantum multi-criticality in the presence of an appropriate periodic driving: a linear Dirac-like transition coexists with a nodal loop-like transition caused by emerging symmetries. The existence of multiple universality classes and scaling laws can be unambiguously captured by a single renormalization group approach based on the stroboscopic Floquet Hamiltonian, regardless of whether the topological transition is associated with the anomalous edge modes or not.

Enhancement of local pairing correlations in periodically driven Mott insulators

We investigate a model for a Mott insulator in presence of a time-periodic modulated interaction and a coupling to a thermal reservoir. The combination of drive and dissipation leads to non-equilibrium steady states with a large number of doublon excitations, well above the maximum thermal-equilibrium value. We interpret this effect as an enhancement of local pairing correlations, providing analytical arguments based on a Floquet Hamiltonian. Remarkably, this Hamiltonian shows a tendency to develop long-range staggered superconducting correlations. This suggests the possibility of realizing the elusive eta-pairing phase in driven-dissipative Mott Insulators.

Validity of many-mode Floquet theory with commensurate frequencies

Many-mode Floquet theory [T.-S. Ho, S.-I. Chu, and J. V. Tietz, Chem. Phys. Lett. 96, 464 (1983)] is a technique for solving the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation in the special case of multiple periodic fields, but its limitations are not well understood. We show that for a Hamiltonian consisting of two time-periodic couplings of commensurate frequencies (integer multiples of a common frequency), many-mode Floquet theory provides a correct expression for unitary time evolution. However, caution must be taken in the interpretation of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the corresponding many-mode Floquet Hamiltonian, as only part of its spectrum is directly relevant to time evolution. We give a physical interpretation for the remainder of the spectrum of the Hamiltonian. These results are relevant to the engineering of quantum systems using multiple controllable periodic fields.

Analytical double-unitary-transformation approach for strongly and periodically driven three-level systems

Floquet theory combined with the generalized Van Vleck nearly degenerate perturbation theory has been widely employed for studying various two-level systems that are driven by external fields via time-dependent longitudinal (i.e., diagonal) couplings. However, three-level systems strongly driven by time-dependent transverse (i.e., off-diagonal) couplings have rarely been investigated, due to the breakdown of the traditional rotating wave approximation. Meanwhile, the conventional perturbation theory is not directly applicable, since a small parameter for the perturbed part is no longer apparent. Here we develop a double-unitary-transformation approach to deal with periodically modulated and strongly driven systems, where the time-dependent Hamiltonian has large off-diagonal elements. The first unitary transformation converts strong off-diagonal elements to diagonal ones, and the second enables us to harness the generalized Van Vleck perturbation theory to deal with the transformed Floquet matrix and also allows us to reduce the infinite-dimensional Floquet Hamiltonian to a finite effective one. For a strongly modulated three-level system, with the combination of the Floquet theory and the transformed generalized Van Vleck perturbation theory, we obtain analytical results of the system, which agree well with exact numerical solutions. This method offers a useful tool to analytically study multilevel systems with strong transverse couplings.

Dynamical Singularities of Floquet Higher-Order Topological Insulators.

We propose a versatile framework to dynamically generate Floquet higher-order topological insulators by multistep driving of topologically trivial Hamiltonians. Two analytically solvable examples are used to illustrate this procedure to yield Floquet quadrupole and octupole insulators with zero- and/or π-corner modes protected by mirror symmetries. Furthermore, we introduce dynamical topological invariants from the full unitary return map and show its phase bands contain Weyl singularities whose topological charges form dynamical multipole moments in the Brillouin zone. Combining them with the topological index of a Floquet Hamiltonian gives a pair of Z_{2} invariant ν_{0} and ν_{π} which fully characterize the higher-order topology and predict the appearance of zero- and π-corner modes. Our work establishes a systematic route to construct and characterize Floquet higher-order topological phases.

Photoinduced topological phase transition and optical conductivity of black phosphorene

We theoretically study the photoinduced topological phase transition of black phosphorene induced by laser light with moderate intensity, which can satisfy the experimentally realistic requirement to preserve the quality of the sample. By deriving the effective Floquet Hamiltonian in terms of pseudospin $S=1/2$ degrees of freedom, we calculate the Chern number and the optical conductivity of the system with varying laser frequency $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$. As one can expect from the photon-assisted transport, the longitudinal optical conductivity has a threshold frequency at $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}=\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}/\ensuremath{\hbar}$, with $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$ being the band gap of black phosphorene. Unlike the longitudinal optical conductivity, the optical Hall conductivity sharply increases when $\ensuremath{\hbar}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$ goes beyond one-half of the band gap $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}/2$. We also show that the Chern number changes from trivial to nontrivial upon increasing frequency $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$ beyond $\ensuremath{\hbar}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}=\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}/2$.

Effective Floquet Hamiltonian in the low-frequency regime

We develop a theory to derive effective Floquet Hamiltonians in the weak drive and low-frequency regime. We construct the theory in analogy with band theory for electrons in a spatially-periodic and weak potential, such as occurs in some crystalline materials. As a prototypical example, we apply this theory to graphene driven by circularly polarized light of low intensity. We find an analytic expression for the effective Floquet Hamiltonian in the low-frequency regime which accurately predicts the quasienergy spectrum and the Floquet states. Furthermore, we identify self-consistency as the crucial feature effective Hamiltonians in this regime need to satisfy to achieve a high accuracy. The method is useful in providing a realistic description of off-resonant drives for multi-band solid state systems where light-induced topological band structure changes are sought.

Exponentially slow heating in short and long-range interacting Floquet systems

We analyze the dynamics of periodically-driven (Floquet) Hamiltonians with short- and long-range interactions, finding clear evidence for a thermalization time, $\tau^*$, that increases exponentially with the drive frequency. We observe this behavior, both in systems with short-ranged interactions, where our results are consistent with rigorous bounds, and in systems with long-range interactions, where such bounds do not exist at present. Using a combination of heating and entanglement dynamics, we explicitly extract the effective energy scale controlling the rate of thermalization. Finally, we demonstrate that for times shorter than $\tau^*$, the dynamics of the system is well-approximated by evolution under a time-independent Hamiltonian $D_{\mathrm{eff}}$, for both short- and long-range interacting systems.

Quantum Dynamics with Explicitly Time-Dependent Hamiltonians in Multiple Time Scales: A New Algorithm for (t, t') and (t, t', t″) Methods in Laser-Matter Interactions.

The (t, t') method for quantum dynamics with general time-dependent Hamiltonians is exact yet expensive to implement, in the context of laser-atom, laser-molecule interactions. The evolution operator requires a huge storage space with a large operation count for the propagation. A new method is suggested in this work where an analytical block diagonalization of the Floquet Hamiltonian is proposed. The block diagonalization in this novel algorithm is based on Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind. This is combined with a split operator method of chosen order to approximate the full evolution operator. The number of operations are drastically reduced to that of a matrix-vector multiplication repeated only to the order of the number of Floquet channels. Hence, only matrices of the order of the number of position basis functions need to be stored. Thus, the presented algorithm is an effective tool for solving the (t, t', t'') problem for interactions with a bichromatic laser and a single-frequency laser pulse with explicit interactions of the pulse envelope. Hydrogen atom, helium, water, and ammonia, represented with Hamiltonians obtained from standard electronic structure packages, have been investigated in the presence of linearly polarized pulsed laser fields and bichromatic laser fields presenting various time-dependent properties from the program.

Driven Hofstadter butterflies and related topological invariants

The properties of the Hofstadter butterfly, a fractal, self-similar spectrum of a two-dimensional electron gas, are studied in the case where the system is additionally illuminated with monochromatic light. This is accomplished by applying Floquet theory to a tight-binding model on the honeycomb lattice subjected to a perpendicular magnetic field and either linearly or circularly polarized light. It is shown how the deformation of the fractal structure of the spectrum depends on intensity and polarization. Thereby, the topological properties of the Hofstadter butterfly in the presence of the oscillating electric field are investigated. A thorough numerical analysis of not only the Chern numbers but also the ${W}_{3}$ invariants gives the appropriate insight into the topology of this driven system. This includes a comparison of a direct ${W}_{3}$ calculation to the method based on summing up Chern numbers of the truncated Floquet Hamiltonian.