Periodically driven interacting electrons in 1D: a many-body Floquet approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a combined Floquet and Cluster Perturbation Theory approach to study the dynamics of interacting electrons in 1D under periodic driving, revealing a mechanism for insulator-to-metal transition.

Contribution

It develops a novel method integrating Floquet formalism with Cluster Perturbation Theory to analyze correlated electron dynamics under harmonic driving.

Findings

Zero-mode Floquet band becomes gapless at small frequencies.

System transitions from insulator to metal under certain driving conditions.

Method captures electron-photon and electron-electron interactions simultaneously.

Abstract

We propose a method to study the time evolution of correlated electrons driven by an harmonic perturbation. Combining Floquet formalism to include the time-dependent field and Cluster Perturbation Theory to solve the many-body problem in the presence of short-range correlations, we treat the electron double dressing - by photons and by e-e interaction - on the same footing. We apply the method to an extended Hubbard chain at half occupation and we show that in the regime of small field frequency and for given values of field strength the zero-mode Floquet band is no more gapped and the system recovers a metallic state. Our results are indicative of an omnipresent mechanism for insulator-to-metal transition in 1D systems.