We study the combined effect of quasiperiodic disorder, driven, and interaction in the periodically kicked Aubry-Andr'e model. In the noninteracting limit, by analyzing the quasienergy spectrum statistics, we verify the existence of a dynamical localization transition in the high-frequency region, whereas the spectrum statistics becomes intricate in the low-frequency region due to the emergence of the extended/localized-to-multifractal edges in the quasienergy spectrum, which separate the multifractal states from the extended (localized) states. When the interaction is introduced, we find the periodically kicked incommensurate potential can lead to a transition from the ergodic to many-body-localization phase in the high-frequency region. However, the many-body localization phase vanishes in the low-frequency region even for the strong quasiperiodic disorder. Our studies demonstrate that the periodically kicked Aubry-Andr'e model displays rich dynamical phenomena and the driving frequency plays an important role in the formation of many-body localization in addition to the disorder strength.
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.
We study the localization-delocalization transition of Floquet eigenstates in a driven fermionic chain with an incommensurate Aubry-Andr\'e potential and a hopping amplitude which is varied periodically in time. Our analysis shows the presence of a mobility edge separating single-particle delocalized states from localized and multifractal states in the Floquet spectrum. Such a mobility edge does not have any counterpart in the static Aubry-Andr\'e model and exists for a range of drive frequencies near the critical frequency at which the transition occurs. The presence of the mobility edge is shown to leave a distinct imprint on fermion transport in the driven chain; it also influences the Shannon entropy and the survival probability of the fermions at long times. In addition, we find the presence of CAT (linear superposition of localized single particle states) states in the Floquet spectrum with weights centered around a few nearby sites of the chain. This is shown to be tied to the flattening of Floquet bands over a range of quasienergies. We support our numerical studies with a semianalytic expression for the Floquet Hamiltonian (
HF) computed within a Floquet perturbation theory. The eigenspectra of the perturbative
HF so obtained exhibit qualitatively identical properties to the exact eigenstates of
HF obtained numerically. Our results thus constitute an analytic expression of a
HF whose spectrum supports multifractal and cat states. We suggest experiments which can test our theory.
In this study, we examine whether periodic driving of a model with a quasiperiodic potential can generate interesting Floquet phases that have no counterparts in the static model. Specifically, we consider the Aubry-Andr\'e model, which is a one-dimensional time-independent model with an on-site quasiperiodic potential
V0 and a nearest-neighbor hopping amplitude that is taken to have a staggered form. We add a uniform hopping amplitude that varies in time either sinusoidally or as a square pulse with a frequency $\ensuremath{\omega}$. Unlike the static Aubry-Andr\'e model, which has a simple phase diagram with only two phases (only extended or only localized states), we find that the driven model has four possible phases for the Floquet eigenstates: a phase with gapless quasienergy bands and only extended states, a phase with multiple mobility gaps separating different quasienergy bands, a mixed phase with coexisting extended, multifractal, and localized states, and a phase with only localized states. The multifractal states have generalized inverse participation ratios that scale with the system size with exponents that are different from the values for both extended and localized states. In addition, we observe intricate reentrant transitions between the different kinds of states when $\ensuremath{\omega}$ and
V0 are varied. The appearance of such transitions is confirmed by the behavior of the Shannon entropy. Many of our numerical results can be understood from an analytic Floquet Hamiltonian derived using a Floquet perturbation theory that uses the inverse of the driving amplitude as the perturbation parameter. In the limit of high frequency and large driving amplitude, we find that the Floquet quasienergies match the energies of the undriven system, but the Floquet eigenstates are much more extended. We also study the spreading of a one-particle wave packet, and we find that it is always ballistic but the ballistic velocity varies significantly with the system parameters, sometimes showing a nonmonotonic dependence on
V0 that does not occur in the static model. Finally, we compare the results for the driven model, which has a static staggered hopping amplitude, with a model that has a static uniform hopping amplitude, and we find some significant differences between the two cases. All of our results are found to be independent of the driving protocol, either sinusoidal or square pulse. We conclude that the interplay of the quasiperiodic potential and driving produces a rich phase diagram that does not appear in the static model.
Multifractal states offer a "third way" for quantum matter, neither fully localized nor ergodic, exhibiting singular continuous spectra, self-similar wavefunctions, and transport and entanglement scaling exponents intermediate between extended and localized states. While multifractality in equilibrium systems generally requires fine-tuning to a critical point, externally driven quantum matter can exhibit multifractal states with no equilibrium counterpart. We report the experimental observation of multifractal matter and anomalous localization in a kicked Aubry-André-Harper quasicrystal. Our cold-atom realization of this previously-unexplored model is enabled by apodized Floquet engineering techniques which expand the accessible phase diagram by five orders of magnitude. This kicked quantum quasicrystal exhibits a rich phase diagram including not only fully localized and fully delocalized phases but also an extended region comprising an intricate nested pattern of localized, delocalized, and multifractal states. Mapping transport properties throughout the phase diagram, we observe disorder-driven re-entrant delocalization and sub-ballistic transport, and present a theoretical explanation of these phenomena based on eigenstate multifractality. These results open up the exploration of new states of matter characterized by an intricate interplay of fractal structure and quantum dynamics.
Many-body localization at nonzero temperature is a quantum-phase transition that is of very fundamental interest to both many-body quantum physics and statistical mechanics. Non-Hermitian systems possess rich and unique phenomena that never are found in their Hermitian counterparts, such as unidirectional invisibility and enhanced sensitivity. In the present study, we explore many-body localization in periodically driven non-Hermitian lattices. The lattices are one-dimensional, and the drive is designed in a piecewise two-step form that consists of a uniform coherent tunneling and incommensurate onsite gain and loss. We find that the system can be in localized, delocalized, or mixed phases depending on the driving frequency and the phase shift of the complex potential. Two critical driving frequencies are identified; one corresponds to the largest phase shift of the complex potential that keeps all the quasienergy spectra real and the eigenstates extended, and the other one is established by the vanishing of all real spectra. We also find that a very weak complex potential can lead the system to localization, when the driving frequency is lower than the critical frequency. We show that in the high-frequency limit, the critical phase shift that separates the two regions with respectively a real and complex spectrum tends to a constant, and the constant can be determined by an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian.
We investigate the role of a quasiperiodically driven electric field in a disordered fermionic chain. In the clean noninteracting case, we show the emergence of dynamical localization---a phenomenon previously known to exist only for a perfect periodic drive. In contrast, in the presence of disorder, where a high-frequency periodic drive preserves Anderson localization, we show that the quasiperiodic drive destroys it and leads to slow relaxation. Considering the role of interactions, we uncover the phenomenon of quasiperiodic driving-induced logarithmic relaxation, where a suitably tuned drive (corresponding to dynamical localization in the clean, noninteracting limit) slows down the dynamics even when the disorder is small enough for the system to be in the ergodic phase. This is in sharp contrast to the fast relaxation seen in the undriven model, as well as the absence of thermalization (drive-induced many-body localization) exhibited by a high-frequency periodic drive.