We address the nature of phase transitions in periodically driven systems coupled to a bath. The latter enables a synchronized nonequilibrium Floquet steady state at finite entropy, which we analyze for rapid drives within a nonequilibrium renormalization group (RG) approach. While the infinitely rapidly driven limit exhibits a second-order phase transition, here we reveal that fluctuations turn the transition first order when the driving frequency is finite. This can be traced back to a universal mechanism, which crucially hinges on the competition of degenerate, near critical modes associated with higher Floquet Brillouin zones. The critical exponents of the infinitely rapidly driven system-including a new, independent one-can yet be probed experimentally upon smoothly tuning towards that limit.
We develop a comprehensive renormalization group (RG) approach to criticality in open Floquet systems, where dissipation enables the system to reach a well-defined Floquet steady state of finite entropy, and all observables are synchronized with the drive. We provide a detailed description of how to combine Keldysh and Floquet formalisms to account for the critical fluctuations in the weakly and rapidly driven regime. A key insight is that a reduction to the time-averaged static sector is not possible close to the critical point. This guides the design of a perturbative dynamic RG approach, which treats the time-dependent, dynamic sector associated to higher harmonics of the drive, on an equal footing with the time-averaged sector. Within this framework, we develop a weak drive expansion scheme, which enables to systematically truncate the RG flow equations in powers of the inverse drive frequency ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$. This allows us to show how a periodic drive inhibits scale invariance and critical fluctuations of second-order phase transitions in rapidly driven open systems. Although criticality emerges in the limit ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}=0$, any finite drive frequency produces a scale that remains finite all through the phase transition. This is a universal mechanism that relies on the competition of the critical fluctuations within the static and dynamic sectors of the problem.
We study the fate of the Ising model and its universal properties when driven by a rapid periodic drive and weakly coupled to a bath at equilibrium. The far-from-equilibrium steady-state regime is accessed by means of a Floquet mean-field approach. We show that, depending on the details of the bath, the drive can strongly renormalize the critical temperature to higher temperatures, modify the critical exponents, or even change the nature of the phase transition from second to first order after the emergence of a tricritical point. Moreover, by judiciously selecting the frequency of the field and by engineering the spectrum of the bath, one can drive a ferromagnetic Hamiltonian to an antiferromagnetically ordered phase and vice versa.
The topological phase transitions in static and periodically driven Kitaev chains are investigated by means of a renormalization group (RG) approach. These transitions, across which the numbers of static or Floquet Majorana edge modes change, are accompanied by divergences of the relevant Berry connections. These divergences at certain high-symmetry points in momentum space form the basis of the RG approach, through which topological phase boundaries are identified as a function of system parameters. We also introduce several aspects to characterize the quantum criticality of the topological phase transitions in both static and Floquet systems: a correlation function that measures the overlap of Majorana-Wannier functions, the decay length of the Majorana edge mode, and a scaling law relating the critical exponents. These indicate a common universal critical behavior for topological phase transitions, in both static and periodically driven chains. For the latter, the RG flows additionally display intriguing features related to gap closures at non-high-symmetry points due to momentarily frozen dynamics.
Quenched randomness can lead to robust nonequilibrium phases of matter in periodically driven (Floquet) systems. Analyzing transitions between such dynamical phases requires a method capable of treating the twin complexities of disorder and discrete time-translation symmetry. We introduce a real-space renormalization group approach, asymptotically exact in the strong-disorder limit, and exemplify its use on the periodically driven interacting quantum Ising model. We analyze the universal physics near the critical lines and multicritical point of this model, and demonstrate the robustness of our results to the inclusion of weak interactions.
We study finite-time driving across second-order dissipative quantum phase transitions described by Lindblad dynamics. We show that the nonadiabatic entropy production, which quantifies deviations from the instantaneous nonequilibrium steady state, exhibits universal power-law scaling with the ramp duration in analogy to the Kibble-Zurek mechanism for closed systems. This establishes the universality of irreversible dissipation induced by driving an open quantum system near criticality. Furthermore, in systems described by bosonic Gaussian states, our scaling laws predict that the nonadiabatic entropy production is independent of driving speed to leading order, revealing a distinctive feature of Gaussian dissipative quantum phase transitions. We validate these analytical predictions in the thermodynamic limit of the driven-dissipative Dicke model and via finite-size scaling in the open Kerr model. Our results establish a general framework for understanding universal nonequilibrium response and thermodynamic irreversibility in critical open quantum systems.
We identify several distinct phases of thermalization that describe regimes of behavior in isolated, periodically driven (Floquet), mesoscopic quantum chaotic systems. In doing so, we also identify a Floquet thermal ensemble, the ``ladder ensemble,'' that is qualitatively distinct from the ``featureless infinite-temperature'' state that has long been assumed to be the appropriate maximum-entropy equilibrium ensemble for driven systems. The phases we find can be coarsely classified by (i) whether or not the system irreversibly exchanges energy of order $\ensuremath{\omega}$ with the drive, i.e., Floquet thermalizes, and (ii) the Floquet thermal ensemble describing the final equilibrium in systems that do Floquet thermalize. These phases are representative of regimes of behavior in mesoscopic systems, but they are sharply defined in a particular large-system limit where the drive frequency $\ensuremath{\omega}$ scales up with system size
N as the $N\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$ limit is taken: we examine frequency scalings ranging from a weakly
N-dependent $\ensuremath{\omega}(N)\ensuremath{\sim}logN$, to stronger scalings ranging from $\ensuremath{\omega}(N)\ensuremath{\sim}\sqrt{N}$ to $\ensuremath{\omega}(N)\ensuremath{\sim}N$. We show that the transition where Floquet thermalization breaks down happens at an extensive drive frequency and, beyond that, systems that do not Floquet thermalize are distinguished based on the presence or absence of rare resonances across Floquet zones. We produce a thermalization phase diagram that is relevant for numerical studies of Floquet systems and experimental studies on small-scale quantum simulators, both of which lack a clean separation of scales between
N and $\ensuremath{\omega}$. A striking prediction of our work is that, under the assumption of perfect isolation, certain realistic quench protocols from simple pure initial states can show Floquet thermalization to a type of Schrodinger-cat state that is a global superposition of states at distinct temperatures. Our work extends and organizes the theory of Floquet thermalization, heating, and equilibrium into the setting of mesoscopic quantum systems.