2015/10/31 by D. A. Abanin, W. De Roeck, W. W. Ho +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.stat-mech #cond-mat.quant-gas #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.95.014112
published as Phys. Rev. B 95, 014112 (2017) · 6 + 4 pages, Paper updated to match published version
arxiv created 2017/02/07 · arxiv updated 2017/02/09
We establish some general dynamical properties of lattice many-body systems that are subject to a high-frequency periodic driving. We prove that such systems have a quasi-conserved extensive quantity H_*, which plays the role of an effective static Hamiltonian. The dynamics of the system (e.g., evolution of any local observable) is well-approximated by the evolution with the Hamiltonian H_* up to time τ_*, which is exponentially long in the driving frequency. We further show that the energy absorption rate is exponentially small in the driving frequency. In cases where H_* is ergodic, the driven system prethermalizes to a thermal state described by H_* at intermediate times t\lesssim τ_*, eventually heating up to an infinite-temperature state at times t∼ τ_*. Our results indicate that rapidly driven many-body systems generically exhibit prethermalization and very slow heating. We briefly discuss implications for experiments which realize topological states by periodic driving.