In Floquet engineering, periodic driving is used to realize novel phases of matter that are inaccessible in thermal equilibrium. For this purpose, the Floquet theory provides us a recipe for obtaining a static effective Hamiltonian. Although many existing works have treated closed systems, it is important to consider the effect of dissipation, which is ubiquitous in nature. Understanding the interplay of periodic driving and dissipation is a fundamental problem of nonequilibrium statistical physics that is receiving growing interest because of the fact that experimental advances have allowed us to engineer dissipation in a controllable manner. In this review, we give a detailed exposition on the formalism of quantum master equations for open Floquet systems and highlight recent work investigating whether equilibrium statistical mechanics applies to Floquet states.
In Floquet engineering, periodic driving is used to realize novel phases of matter that are inaccessible in thermal equilibrium. For this purpose, the Floquet theory provides us a recipe for obtaining a static effective Hamiltonian. Although many existing works have treated closed systems, it is important to consider the effect of dissipation, which is ubiquitous in nature. Understanding the interplay of periodic driving and dissipation is a fundamental problem of nonequilibrium statistical physics that is receiving growing interest because of the fact that experimental advances have allowed us to engineer dissipation in a controllable manner. In this review, we give a detailed exposition on the formalism of quantum master equations for open Floquet systems and highlight recent work investigating whether equilibrium statistical mechanics applies to Floquet states.
This paper explores topological thermodynamics in driven dissipative quantum materials, a field at the intersection of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, quantum topology, and condensed matter physics. We review theoretical frameworks and experimental advancements, highlighting how driving forces and dissipative processes influence the formation, stability, and characterization of topological phases. A special focus is placed on Floquet engineering for open quantum systems, where periodic driving and environmental coupling lead to novel non-equilibrium steady states with exotic topological properties. We discuss challenges in defining thermodynamic quantities like temperature and entropy in these far-from-equilibrium settings and examine how topological invariants manifest in dissipative dynamics and transport. The paper uniquely synthesizes advancements in periodically driven, open quantum systems by critically examining how dissipation, often seen as detrimental, can be precisely engineered to reveal or even stabilize topological order. This offers a distinct perspective on designing next-generation quantum technologies. Key theoretical tools, including generalized Floquet theory, Keldysh formalism, and non-Hermitian descriptions, are discussed alongside experimental platforms like photonic quantum gases and cold atomic systems.
Time-periodic quantum systems are present all over science and technology. They have been successfully studied using Floquet theory, and a broad diversity of interesting phenomena such as coherent destruction of tunnelling, dynamical localization and creation of new phases of matter have been discovered. Furthermore, periodic driving has also been introduced as a tool for engineering novel quantum systems that have no static analogue. Besides these remarkable achievements for isolated systems, in reality, systems always interact with their surroundings. Taking the effect of the environment into account, time-periodic quantum systems have been mainly described using the Floquet-Markov approach, which consists in deriving a weak coupling master equation in the Floquet basis. In this thesis, we focus on how to overcome these standard approximations in the description of driven open quantum systems. We start by providing a general review on the topics of isolated driven systems, open quantum systems and the Floquet-Markov approach, before presenting the main results of this work. Under the effect of high-frequency driving, we provide an analytic solution to a large class of open quantum systems. Our method relies on discrete symmetries of the system-bath Hamiltonian and grants access to the time evolution operator of the full system, including bath degrees of freedom. The solution can be interpreted as the stroboscopic evolution of a family of observables under the influence of an effective static Hamiltonian. This provides a flexible simulation procedure of nontrivial Hamiltonians. The results are exemplified with the driven spin-boson model, where a coherent control of dissipation is observed. By a novel combination of Floquet theory, full counting statistics and a Markovian embedding strategy (reaction coordinate mapping), more intricate scenarios with additional driven system-environment interactions are addressed. Hereby, we can access the dynamics and thermodynamics of a periodically driven thermal machine. For the particular case where the working medium is a two-level system, we identify four different operating regimes, including a heat engine and a refrigerator. As the coupling strength is increased, their efficiency and coefficient of performance decrease and the refrigerator regime disappears. Notably, our model reproduces the setup of laser cooling of trapped ions in a specific parameter limit. Following the same combination of methods, we investigate electron pumping through a single quantum dot with periodically modulated energy and tunnelling amplitudes. In the high-frequency regime, the direction of the current can be controlled with the driving phase and a rectification effect that is exclusive to the non-Markovian character of the model is observed. In the low-frequency regime, we apply an additional transformation to view the model as three independent transport channels and observe that the coupling strength also controls the current direction. Studying charge fluctuations we validate that our model behaves as a single-electron source.
We study driven and open quantum systems described by a time-periodic Lindblad master equation. In closed systems, the stroboscopic dynamics can always be described by an effective time-independent Floquet Hamiltonian; this idea is the basis of Floquet engineering. However, in the presence of dissipation, the existence of an effective time-independent Floquet Lindbladian is not guaranteed due to the non-unitary nature of the evolution. Using Floquet theory, we construct a well-defined time-independent Floquet Lindbladian in an extended Sambe-Liouville space, transforming the initial time-dependent problem to a static and non-Hermitian eigenvalue problem. For harmonic driving, we introduce a matrix continued fraction method to nonperturbatively resum multiphoton processes and construct an effective Floquet Lindbladian acting only on the physical Liouville space. Compared to other high-frequency expansions, this method has the advantage of providing the whole infinite series expansion at once. Using a resolvent formalism, we show how to obtain a spectral Floquet representation of correlation functions of an open quantum system. As an application, we consider a dissipating two-level system in a linearly polarized field and calculate its resonance fluorescence spectrum. Furthermore, we consider a parametrically driven quantum dot with pump and loss for which we calculate its spectral function and current-voltage characteristics.
Laser technology has developed and accelerated photo-induced nonequilibrium physics, from both the scientific and engineering viewpoints. Floquet engineering, i.e., controlling material properties and functionalities by time-periodic drives, is at the forefront of quantum physics of light-matter interaction. However, it is limited to ideal dissipationless systems. Extending Floquet engineering to various materials requires understanding of the quantum states emerging in a balance of the periodic drive and energy dissipation. Here, we derive a general description for nonequilibrium steady states (NESSs) in periodically driven dissipative systems by focusing on systems under high-frequency drive and time-independent Lindblad-type dissipation. Our formula correctly describes the time average, fluctuation, and symmetry properties of the NESS, and can be computed efficiently in numerical calculations. This approach will play fundamental roles in Floquet engineering in a broad class of dissipative quantum systems from atoms and molecules to mesoscopic systems, and condensed matter.
Quantum systems driven by a time-periodic field are a platform of condensed matter physics where effective (quasi)stationary states, termed "Floquet states", can emerge with external-field-dressed quasiparticles during driving. They appear, for example, as a prethermal intermediate state in isolated driven quantum systems or as a nonequilibrium steady state in driven open quantum systems coupled to environment. Floquet states may have various intriguing physical properties, some of which can be drastically different from those of the original undriven systems in equilibrium. In this article, we review fundamental aspects of Floquet states, and discuss recent topics and applications of Floquet states in condensed matter physics.
Abstract Equilibrium statistical mechanics rests on the assumption of chaotic dynamics of a system modulo the conservation laws of local observables: extremization of entropy immediately gives Gibbs’ ensemble (GE) for energy conserving systems and a generalized version of it (GGE) when the number of local conserved quantities is more than one. Through the last decade, statistical mechanics has been extended to describe the late-time behaviour of periodically driven (Floquet) quantum matter starting from a generic state. The structure built on the fundamental assumptions of ergodicity and identification of the relevant conservation laws in this inherently non-equilibrium setting. More recently, it has been shown that the statistical mechanics of Floquet systems has a much richer structure due to the existence of emergent conservation laws: these are approximate but stable conservation laws arising due to the drive, and are not present in the undriven system. Extensive numerical and analytical results support perpetual stability of these emergent (though approximate) conservation laws, probably even in the thermodynamic limit. This banks on the recent finding of a sharp threshold for Floquet thermalization in clean, interacting non-integrable Floquet systems. This indicates to the possibility of stable Floquet phases of matter in disorder-free systems. This review intends to give a self-contained theoretical overview of these developments for a broad physics audience. We conclude by briefly surveying the current experimental scenario.