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arXiv:1410.0464 · Physical Review E

Condition for emergence of the Floquet-Gibbs state in periodically driven open systems

Tatsuhiko Shirai, Takashi Mori, Seiji Miyashita

Published Mar 3, 2015• 83 citations
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Abstract

We study probability distribution of a steady state of a periodically driven system coupled to a thermal bath by using a quantum master equation in the weak-coupling limit. It is proved that, even when the external field is strong, the probability distribution is independent of the detailed nature of the thermal bath under the following conditions: (i) the Hamiltonian of the relevant system is bounded and the period of the driving field is short, (ii) the Hamiltonians for the driving field at different times commute, and (iii) the Hamiltonians of the driving field and of the interaction between the relevant system and the thermal bath commute. It is shown that the steady state is described by the Gibbs distribution of the Floquet states of the relevant system at the temperature of the thermal bath.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.91.030101

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We study probability distribution of a steady state of a periodically driven system coupled to a thermal bath by using a quantum master equation in the weak-coupling limit. It is proved that, even when the external field is strong, the probability distribution is independent of the detailed nature of the thermal bath under the following conditions: (i) the Hamiltonian of the relevant system is bounded and the period of the driving field is short, (ii) the Hamiltonians for the driving field at different times commute, and (iii) the Hamiltonians of the driving field and of the interaction between the relevant system and the thermal bath commute. It is shown that the steady state is described by the Gibbs distribution of the Floquet states of the relevant system at the temperature of the thermal bath.
The dynamics of periodically driven quantum systems coupled to a thermal environment is investigated. The interaction of the system with the external coherent driving field is taken into account exactly by making use of the Floquet picture. Treating the coupling to the environment within the Born-Markov approximation one finds a Pauli-type master equation for the diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix in the Floquet representation. The stationary solution of the latter yields a quasistationary, time-periodic density matrix which describes the long-time behavior of the system. Taking the example of a periodically driven particle in a box, the stationary solution is determined numerically for a wide range of driving amplitudes and temperatures. It is found that the quasistationary distribution differs substantially from a Boltzmann-type distribution at the temperature of the environment. For large driving fields it exhibits a plateau region describing a nearly constant population of a certain number of Floquet states. This number of Floquet states turns out to be nearly independent of the temperature. The plateau region is sharply separated from an exponential tail of the stationary distribution which expresses a canonical Boltzmann-type distribution over the mean energies of the Floquet states. These results are explained in terms of the structure of the matrix of transition rates for the dissipative quantum system. Investigating the corresponding classical, nonlinear Hamiltonian system, one finds that in the semiclassical range essential features of the quasistationary distribution can be understood from the structure of the underlying classical phase space.
A periodically driven quantum system, when coupled to a heat bath, relaxes to a non-equilibrium asymptotic state. In the general situation, the retrieval of this asymptotic state presents a rather non-trivial task. It was recently shown that in the limit of an infinitesimal coupling, using the so-called rotating wave approximation (RWA), and under strict conditions imposed on the time-dependent system Hamiltonian, the asymptotic state can attain the Gibbs form. A Floquet–Gibbs state is characterized by a density matrix which is diagonal in the Floquet basis of the system Hamiltonian with the diagonal elements obeying a Gibbs distribution, being parametrized by the corresponding Floquet quasi-energies. Addressing the non-adiabatic driving regime, upon using the Magnus expansion, we employ the concept of a corresponding effective Floquet Hamiltonian. In doing so we go beyond the conventionally used RWA and demonstrate that the idea of Floquet–Gibbs states can be extended to the realistic case of a weak, although finite system-bath coupling, herein termed effective Floquet–Gibbs states.
How to understand the order of Floquet stationary states in the presence of external bath coupling and their statistical mechanics is challenging; the answers are important for preparation and control of those Floquet states. Here, we propose a scheme to classify the statistical distribution of Floquet states for time-periodic systems which couple to an external heat bath. If an effective Hamiltonian and a system-bath coupling operator, which are all time independent, can be simultaneously obtained via a time-periodic unitary transformation, the statistical mechanics of the Floquet states is equivalent to the equilibrium statistical mechanics of the effective Hamiltonian. In the large driving frequency cases, we also show that the conditions of this theorem can be weakened to the following: The time-period part in the system Hamiltonian commutes with the system-bath coupling operator. A Floquet-Markov approach is applied to numerically compute the Floquet state occupation distribution of a bosonic chain, and the results agree with the theoretical predictions.
A periodically driven quantum system, when coupled to a thermal bath, relaxes to a non-equilibrium asymptotic state. To describe these states in the case of infinitesimal coupling, the notion of Floquet-Gibbs state was recently introduced. A Floquet-Gibbs state is characterized by a density matrix diagonal in the Floquet basis of the decoupled coherent system. The diagonal elements obey the Boltzmann distribution parametrized by the quasienergies of the Floquet states. It was pointed out that the Floquet-Gibbs states are realized under strict conditions that might be experimentally infeasible. Here, by using the Magnus expansion and the concept of effective Floquet Hamiltonian, we go beyond the conventionally used rotating-wave approximation and demonstrate that the condition of infinitesimal coupling can be lifted and the idea of Floquet-Gibbs states can be extended to a broader class of open quantum systems possessing finite dissipation.
Periodically driven quantum systems are commonly modeled using master equations constructed in the eigenbasis of an undriven Hamiltonian, implicitly assuming that environmental dissipation couples to static energy transitions even under strong time-periodic driving. The validity of this approximation beyond weak or near-resonant driving remains poorly understood. To address the need for a more self-consistent quantum theory approach, we formulate a nonsecular Floquet--Markov generalized master equation (F-GME) in the quasienergy basis, treating interaction-induced (internal) and drive-induced (external) nonperturbative dressing on an equal footing. We subsequently investigate dissipation in two minimal driven open quantum systems---a harmonically driven two-level system and a harmonically driven coupled-two-level-system---each weakly coupled to a Markovian bath. Comparing the F-GME to a time-independent dressed-basis master equation, we show that even for a flat-bath spectral density and weak dissipation, the two approaches can yield qualitatively different steady-state populations and emission spectra. We resolve dissipation into drive-assisted sideband processes decaying via Floquet extended-space quasienergy channels, and show these channels can hybridize through nonsecular couplings into collective Floquet--Liouville modes governing observable spectral resonances. This analysis demonstrates that time-independent dissipative descriptions can incorrectly weight multiphoton Floquet transitions by collapsing quasienergy-resolved decay pathways into static energy gaps. The F-GME framework provides a systematic diagnostic for identifying regimes where Floquet-consistent dissipation is essential and clarifies the physical origin of discrepancies between commonly used master-equation approaches.
Periodic driving is used to steer physical systems to unique stationary states or nonequilibrium steady states (NESS), producing enhanced properties inaccessible to nondriven systems. For open quantum systems, characterizing the NESS is challenging and existing results are generally limited to specific types of driving and the Born-Markov approximation. Here, we go beyond these limits by studying a generic periodically driven N -level quantum system interacting with a low-density thermal gas. Exploiting the framework of Floquet scattering theory, we establish general Floquet thermalization conditions constraining the nature of the NESS and the transition rates. Moreover, we examine theoretically the structure of the NESS in the high-temperature limit and find out that the NESS complies, rather surprisingly, with a uniform probability distribution (predicted by the Boltzmann law) for any driving. Numerical calculations illustrate our theoretical elaborations for a simple toy model.