Theory of many-body localization in periodically driven systems

Dmitry A. Abanin, Wojciech De Roeck, François Huveneers

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

167 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present a theory of periodically driven, many-body localized (MBL) systems. We argue that MBL persists under periodic driving at high enough driving frequency: The Floquet operator (evolution operator over one driving period) can be represented as an exponential of an effective time-independent Hamiltonian, which is a sum of quasi-local terms and is itself fully MBL. We derive this result by constructing a sequence of canonical transformations to remove the time-dependence from the original Hamiltonian. When the driving evolves smoothly in time, the theory can be sharpened by estimating the probability of adiabatic Landau-Zener transitions at many-body level crossings. In all cases, we argue that there is delocalization at sufficiently low frequency. We propose a phase diagram of driven MBL systems.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1-11
Number of pages11
JournalAnnals of Physics
Volume372
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 1 2016
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Physics and Astronomy

Keywords

  • Many-body localization
  • Periodically driven systems

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