Abstract
We establish some general dynamical properties of quantum many-body systems that are subject to a high-frequency periodic driving. We prove that such systems have a quasiconserved extensive quantity , which plays the role of an effective static Hamiltonian. The dynamics of the system (e.g., evolution of any local observable) is well approximated by the evolution with the Hamiltonian up to time , which is exponentially large in the driving frequency. We further show that the energy absorption rate is exponentially small in the driving frequency. In cases where is ergodic, the driven system prethermalizes to a thermal state described by at intermediate times , eventually heating up to an infinite-temperature state after times . Our results indicate that rapidly driven many-body systems generically exhibit prethermalization and very slow heating. We briefly discuss implications for experiments which realize topological states by periodic driving.
- Received 3 January 2016
- Revised 2 November 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.95.014112
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