We explore the dynamics of the PXP model when subjected to a periodic drive, and unveil the mechanism through which the interplay between spectral properties and initial states governs the emergence of dynamical revivals and their evolution across the space of driving parameters. For Néel-ordered initial states, revivals follow well-defined trajectories in the parameter space of the driving, primarily determined by a dominant quasi-energy spacing in the Floquet spectrum. Initial states interpolating between Néel and fully polarized configurations exhibit hybrid dynamics, which can be controlled by tuning their overlap with Floquet eigenstates via the driving parameters. This control also allows steering different routes for avoiding Floquet thermalization, showing how both initial state choice and driving protocol shape long-lived dynamics in this driven quantum many-body systems.
We explore the dynamics of the PXP model when subjected to a periodic drive, and unveil the mechanism through which the interplay between spectral properties and initial states governs the emergence of dynamical revivals and their evolution across the space of driving parameters. For Néel-ordered initial states, revivals follow well-defined trajectories in the parameter space of the driving, primarily determined by a dominant quasi-energy spacing in the Floquet spectrum. Initial states interpolating between Néel and fully polarized configurations exhibit hybrid dynamics, which can be controlled by tuning their overlap with Floquet eigenstates via the driving parameters. This control also allows steering different routes for avoiding Floquet thermalization, showing how both initial state choice and driving protocol shape long-lived dynamics in this driven quantum many-body systems.
Motivated by recent experiments realizing long-lived nonequilibrium states in aperiodically driven quantum many-body systems, we investigate the dynamics of a quasiperiodically driven Rydberg atom chain in the strong Rydberg blockage regime. In this regime, the system is kinetically constrained and the ``PXP'' model describes its dynamics. Even without driving, the PXP model exhibits many-body scarring and resultant persistent oscillations for dynamics originating from the N\'eel-ordered initial state. We demonstrate that a rich array of dynamical behaviors emerge when the system is subjected to a continuous drive. In the high-frequency regime, the system exhibits revivals and oscillations for the N\'eel ordered initial state both for periodic and quasiperiodic drives. We trace the origin of this nonergodicity to an effective PXP Hamiltonian for both of these driving protocols in this regime. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the behavior of the fidelity and the entanglement entropy is nonmonotonic at low frequencies in the high-amplitude regime. This leads to several re-entrant scarring transitions both for both the N\'eel-ordered and the fully polarized initial state. Our results demonstrate that continuous quasiperiodic drive protocols can provide a promising route to realize prethermal phases of matter in kinetically constrained systems.
The PXP model hosts a special set of nonergodic states, referred to as quantum many-body scars. One of the consequences of quantum scarring is the periodic revival of the wave function fidelity. It has been reported that quantum fidelity revival occurs in the PXP model for certain product states, and periodic driving of the chemical potential can enhance the magnitude of quantum revival and can even change the frequencies of revival showing the subharmonic response. Although the effect of the periodic driving in the PXP model has been studied in the limit of certain perturbative regimes, the general mechanism of such enhanced revival and frequency change has been barely studied. In this paper, we investigate how periodic driving in the PXP model can systematically control the fidelity revival. Particularly, focusing on a product state called the N\'eel state, we analyze the condition of driving to enhance the magnitude of revival or change the frequencies of revival. To clarify the reason for such control, we consider the similarities between the PXP model and the free spin-1/2 model in graph theoretical analysis and show that the quantum fidelity feature in the PXP model is well explained by the free spin-1/2 model. In addition, under a certain limit of the driving parameters, an analytic approach to explain the main features of the fidelity revival is also applied. Our results give insight into the scarring nature of the periodically driven PXP model and pave the way to understand the (sub)harmonic responses in these models and controls thereof.
Periodic driving has been established as a powerful technique for engineering novel phases of matter and intrinsically out-of-equilibrium phenomena such as time crystals. Recent paper by Bluvstein et al. [Science 371, 1355 (2021)] has demonstrated that periodic driving can also lead to a significant enhancement of quantum many-body scarring, whereby certain nonintegrable systems can display persistent quantum revivals from special initial states. Nevertheless, the mechanisms behind driving-induced scar enhancement remain poorly understood. Here we report a detailed study of the effect of periodic driving on the PXP model describing Rydberg atoms in the presence of a strong Rydberg blockade---the canonical static model of quantum many-body scarring. We show that periodic modulation of the chemical potential gives rise to a rich phase diagram, with at least two distinct types of scarring regimes that we distinguish by examining their Floquet spectra. We formulate a toy model, based on a sequence of square pulses, that accurately captures the details of the scarred dynamics and allows for analytical treatment in the large-amplitude and high-frequency driving regimes. Finally, we point out that driving with a spatially inhomogeneous chemical potential allows to stabilize quantum revivals from arbitrary initial states in the PXP model, via a mechanism similar to prethermalization.
The violation of the Floquet version of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis is rigorously discussed with realistic Hamiltonians.Our model is based on the PXP-type interactions without disorder.We rigorously prove the existence of many-body scar states in the Floquet eigenstates that appear only at specific periods of driving by showing the explicit expressions of the wave functions.This is equivalently the first rigorous proof of the breakdown of the Floquet eigenstate thermalization hypothesis.Through the exact expression of the scar states, the underlying physical mechanism is clarified.Using the underlying mechanism, various driven Hamiltonians with Floquet-scar states can be systematically engineered.We then discuss Floquet-scar states that can be checked through time evolution of observables in a chain of Rydberg atoms.
The presence of quantum scars, athermal eigenstates of a many-body Hamiltonian with finite-energy density, leads to an absence of ergodicity and long-time coherent dynamics starting from initial states that have a high overlap with scars as experimentally observed in a chain of ultracold Rydberg atoms. We show, via study of a periodically driven Rydberg chain, that the drive frequency acts as a tuning parameter for several reentrant transitions between ergodic and weak ergodicity breaking regimes. The former regime shows rapid thermalization of correlation functions and absence of scars in the Floquet spectrum of the system. The latter regime, in contrast, has scars; they lead to long-time coherent dynamics of correlation functions. We provide an analytical explanation of the existence of these regimes by going beyond a high-frequency Magnus expansion and using a novel perturbative approach valid at large drive amplitudes to derive a Floquet Hamiltonian which qualitatively explains the behavior of the driven system at arbitrary frequencies. We also discuss experiments involving finite Rydberg chains which can validate our theory. Our results demonstrate the possibility of drive-frequency-induced tuning between ergodic and weak ergodicity breaking dynamics in a disorder-free quantum many-body system.
Periodically driven quantum systems provide a versatile platform for engineering and exploring non-equilibrium states of matter that have no equilibrium counterparts– a field commonly re- ferred to as Floquet engineering. The research presented in this thesis addresses the microscopic interpretation of experimental spectroscopic signatures, the stability of these driven states in the presence of strong many-body interactions, and the emergence of novel forms of non-equilibrium criticality encoded in quantum entanglement. The first part of the thesis focuses on the interpretation of time- and angle-resolved photo- emission spectroscopy (tr-ARPES), the primary experimental tool for detecting Floquet–Bloch sidebands (FBs). The measured signal reflects interference between processes occurring both inside the material and in the vacuum. In particular, Floquet-dressed initial states coexist and interfere with Volkov-dressed final states arising from the laser-assisted photoelectric effect (LAPE). Their experimental identification requires careful comparison with theoretical predic- tions. Using graphene as a model Dirac material, we perform a systematic comparison between two theoretical frameworks: the first-order perturbative Born approximation (PB1) and time- dependent nonequilibrium Green’s functions (tdNEGF), and compare them with experimental results. We disentangle intrinsic Floquet states, LAPE, and their interference, and quantify how polarization, incidence angle, and near-surface screening shape the observed spectra. Our findings show that, once matrix elements are included, both methods capture qualitative trends, but tdNEGF is necessary to describe the full energy–momentum-resolved features, including hybridization gaps. While non-interacting systems exhibit well-defined FBs, interacting systems absorb energy and can evolve toward an infinite-temperature state. To study this competition between coherent driving and many-body heating, in the second part we consider a one-dimensional chain of interacting spinless fermions using exact diagonalization (ED) and matrix product state (MPS) methods. We compute time-dependent spectral functions and correlation measures, and compare the spectral width of the many-body excitation continuum with the driving frequency to define low- and high-frequency regimes. In our parameter regime, low-frequency driving leads to strong overlap between Floquet sectors, resulting in rapid heating and loss of coherence. For weakly populated continua, we find a transient timescale for the suppression of FBs. When the driving frequency exceeds the continuum width, FBs are well separated and long-lived. Thefinalpartofthethesisinvestigatesnon-equilibriumphenomenafromaninformation-theoretic perspective. Wereportanewclassofdynamicalphasetransitions,termedtemporalentanglement transitions (TET) characterized by non-analytic reorganizations of the entanglement spectrum, in a periodically driven transverse-field Ising chain. These transitions occur in the spectrum of the entanglement Hamiltonian and are signaled by dynamical spontaneous symmetry breaking, marked by the closure of the Schmidt gap and parity flips. These transitions remain invisible to conventional local observables. Finite-size scaling reveals that TET belong to a universality class with a correlation-length exponent ν = 1, mirroring equilibrium Ising universality despite their purely dynamical origin.