Drive Induced Delocalization in Aubry-Andr\'e Model

TL;DR

This paper investigates how periodic driving induces delocalization in the Aubry-André model, revealing chaos-driven instability, threshold effects, and non-monotonic behaviors, with implications for experimental realization.

Contribution

It introduces a classical analogy for drive-induced delocalization in the Aubry-André model and explores effects of different periodic modulations on localization and mobility edges.

Findings

Drive induces delocalization via chaos and instability.

Threshold drive amplitude needed for delocalization.

Non-monotonic dependence of delocalization on driving frequency.

Abstract

Motivated by the recent experiment by Bordia et al [Nat. Phys. 13, 460 (2017)], we study single particle delocalization phenomena of Aubry-Andr\'e (AA) model subjected to periodic drives. In two distinct cases we construct an equivalent classical description to illustrate that the drive induced delocalization phenomena stems from an instability and onset of chaos in the underlying dynamics. In the first case we analyze the delocalization and the thermalization in a time modulated AA potential with respect to driving frequency and demonstrate that there exists a threshold value of the amplitude of the drive. In the next example, we show that the periodic modulation of the hopping amplitude leads to an unusual effect on delocalization with a non-monotonic dependence on the driving frequency. Within a window of such driving frequency a delocalized Floquet band with mobility edge appears, exhibiting multifractality in the spectrum as well as in the Floquet eigenfunctions. Finally, we explore the effect of interaction and discuss how the results of the present analysis can be tested experimentally.