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 language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-11 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Annals of Physics |
Volume | 372 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 1 2016 |
Externally published | Yes |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General Physics and Astronomy
Keywords
- Many-body localization
- Periodically driven systems