We investigate how the critical driving amplitude at the Floquet many-body localized (MBL) to ergodic phase transition differs between smooth and nonsmooth drives. To this end, we numerically study a disordered spin-1/2 chain which is periodically driven by a sine or square-wave drive over a wide range of driving frequencies. In both cases the critical driving amplitude increases monotonically with the frequency, and at large frequencies it is identical for the two drives. However, at low and intermediate frequencies the critical amplitude of the square-wave drive depends strongly on the frequency, while that of the sinusoidal drive is almost constant over a wide frequency range. By analyzing the density of drive-induced resonances we conclude that this difference is due to resonances induced by the higher harmonics which are present (absent) in the Fourier spectrum of the square-wave (sine) drive. Furthermore, we suggest a numerically efficient method for estimating the frequency dependence of the critical driving amplitudes for different drives which is based on calculating the density of drive-induced resonances. We conclude that delocalization occurs once the density of drive-induced resonances reaches a critical value determined only by the static system.
We investigate how the critical driving amplitude at the Floquet many-body localized (MBL) to ergodic phase transition differs between smooth and nonsmooth drives. To this end, we numerically study a disordered spin-1/2 chain which is periodically driven by a sine or square-wave drive over a wide range of driving frequencies. In both cases the critical driving amplitude increases monotonically with the frequency, and at large frequencies it is identical for the two drives. However, at low and intermediate frequencies the critical amplitude of the square-wave drive depends strongly on the frequency, while that of the sinusoidal drive is almost constant over a wide frequency range. By analyzing the density of drive-induced resonances we conclude that this difference is due to resonances induced by the higher harmonics which are present (absent) in the Fourier spectrum of the square-wave (sine) drive. Furthermore, we suggest a numerically efficient method for estimating the frequency dependence of the critical driving amplitudes for different drives which is based on calculating the density of drive-induced resonances. We conclude that delocalization occurs once the density of drive-induced resonances reaches a critical value determined only by the static system.
Subjecting a many-body localized system to a time-periodic drive generically leads to delocalization and a transition to ergodic behavior if the drive is sufficiently strong or of sufficiently low frequency. Here we show that a specific drive can have an opposite effect, taking a static delocalized system into the many-body localized phase. We demonstrate this effect using a one-dimensional system of interacting hard-core bosons subject to an oscillating linear potential. The system is weakly disordered, and is ergodic absent the driving. The time-periodic linear potential leads to a suppression of the effective static hopping amplitude, increasing the relative strengths of disorder and interactions. Using numerical simulations, we find a transition into the many-body localized phase above a critical driving frequency and in a range of driving amplitudes. Our findings highlight the potential of driving schemes exploiting the coherent destruction of tunneling for engineering long-lived Floquet phases.
Many-body localized (MBL) systems are known to thermalize in periodically driven systems. In this work, we demonstrate that under proper driving protocol, this thermalization this thermalization can be resisted such that the MBL phase turns into a non-ergodic extended phase, known as the many-body critical (MBC) phase. Considering a kicked quasiperiodic Ising chain, we show that while at high-frequency driving the ergodic, MBL, and the MBC phases coexist, at moderate driving frequencies the MBL phase is completely suppressed and the MBC phase proliferates in the parameter space. Using quasienergy statistics, Floquet eigenstates, autocorrelation dynamics, and entanglement growth, we characterize the emergent phases and identify non-monotonic signatures revealing richness of the nonergodic phases. Our results establish Floquet driving as a powerful route to stabilizing nonergodic extended many-body phases beyond the conventional Floquet-MBL paradigm.
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of a disordered periodically driven quantum spin chain, with the competition between the interaction, disorder, and Floquet driving being of particular interest. We study dynamics of entanglement entropy, energy absorption to characterize dynamical regimes of the system whether it stays in the Floquet-MBL(many-body localization) region or thermalized region. Starting with a product state in the computational basis, followed by reduced density matrix which in turn gives rise to the entanglement entropy density. With the strength of the interaction, the transverse field, the parallel field, the disorder strength W and the driving frequency, we discover the distinct behaviors of fast delocalization and logarithmic entanglement growth and long-lasting memory of the initial state, indicative of localized or prethermal Floquet regimes. We observe that strong disorder arrests transport and enables slow entanglement dynamics, whereas strong driving frequency arrests energy absorption and creates a long-lived non-equilibrium state. Conversely, weak disorder or low driving frequency leads to delocalization. The outcomes show strong support for non-equilibrium phases in driven many-body systems.
We investigate the fate of a many-body localized phase in a non-Hermitian quasiperiodic model of hardcore bosons subjected to periodic driving. While in general, the many-body localized system is known to thermalize with increasing driving period due to Floquet heating, in this case, we demonstrate that the initially localized system first delocalizes and then localizes again, resulting in a re-entrant many-body localization (MBL) transition as a function of the driving period. Strikingly, further increase in the driving period results in a series of localization-delocalization transitions leaving behind traces of extended regimes (islands) in between MBL phases. Furthermore, non-Hermiticity renders the extended islands boundary-sensitive, resulting in a Floquet many-body skin effect under open boundaries. We present numerical evidence from spectral and dynamic studies, confirming these findings. Our study opens new pathways for understanding the interplay between non-Hermiticity and quasiperiodicity in driven systems.
Dynamical many-body freezing occurs in periodic transverse field-driven integrable quantum spin systems. Under freezing conditions, quantum dynamics causes practically infinite hysteresis in the drive response, maintaining its starting value. We find similar resonant freezing in the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick (LMG) model. In the LMG, the freezing conditions in the driving field suppresses the heating postulated by the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) by inducing dynamical many-body localization, or DMBL. This is in contrast to many-body localization (MBL), which requires disorder to suppress ETH. DMBL has been validated by the inverse participation ratio (IPR) of the quasistationary Floquet modes. Similarly to the TFIM, the LMG exhibits high-frequency localization only at freezing points. IPR localization in the LMG deteriorates with an inverse system size law at lower frequencies, which indicates heating to infinite temperature. Furthermore, adiabatically increasing frequency and amplitude from low values raises the Floquet state IPR in the LMG from nearly zero to unity, indicating a phase crossover. This occurrence enables a future technique to construct an MBL engine in clean systems that can be cycled by adjusting drive parameters only.
We study the many-body localization (MBL) transition of Floquet eigenstates in a driven, interacting fermionic chain with an incommensurate Aubry-Andr\'e potential and a time-periodic hopping amplitude as a function of the drive frequency ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{D}$ using exact diagonalization (ED). We find that the nature of the Floquet eigenstates change from ergodic to Floquet-MBL with increasing frequency; moreover, for a significant range of intermediate ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{D}$, the Floquet eigenstates exhibit nontrivial fractal dimensions. We find a possible transition from the ergodic to this multifractal phase followed by a gradual crossover to the MBL phase as the drive frequency is increased. We also study the fermion autocorrelation function, entanglement entropy, normalized participation ratio (NPR), fermion transport, and the inverse participation ratio (IPR) as a function of ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{D}$. We show that the autocorrelation, fermion transport, and NPR display qualitatively different characteristics (compared to their behavior in the ergodic and MBL regions) for the range of ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{D}$ which supports multifractal eigenstates. In contrast, the entanglement growth in this frequency range tend to have similar features as in the MBL regime; its rate of growth is controlled by ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{D}$. Our analysis thus indicates that the multifractal nature of Floquet-MBL eigenstates can be detected by studying autocorrelation function and fermionic transport of these driven chains. We support our numerical results with a semianalytic expression of the Floquet Hamiltonian obtained using Floquet perturbation theory (FPT) and discuss possible experiments which can test our predictions.