Phase Structure of Driven Quantum Systems

Clean and interacting periodically driven systems are believed to exhibit a single, trivial "infinite-temperature" Floquet-ergodic phase. In contrast, here we show that their disordered Floquet many-body localized counterparts can exhibit distinct ordered phases delineated by sharp transitions. Some of these are analogs of equilibrium states with broken symmetries and topological order, while others-genuinely new to the Floquet problem-are characterized by order and nontrivial periodic dynamics. We illustrate these ideas in driven spin chains with Ising symmetry.

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Award: 1311781
• AV
  Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
• AS
  Australian Society for Fish Biology
• DF
  Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
• MZ
  Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung Multireligiöser und Multiethnischer Gesellschaften
• MF
  Max-Planck-Institut für Physik Komplexer Systeme