Low-frequency phase diagram of irradiated graphene and periodically driven spin-1/2 $XY$ chain

TL;DR

This paper investigates the low-frequency Floquet phase diagram of irradiated graphene and a driven 1D spin-1/2 XY chain, revealing topology changes at fractional periods and analyzing their origins using the adiabatic-impulse method.

Contribution

The study provides semi-analytic criteria for topology changes in driven Dirac materials and spin chains at low frequencies, extending understanding beyond standard perturbative approaches.

Findings

Topology changes occur at fractional periods T/3 and 2T/3 in graphene.

Phase diagrams at fractional times are characterized and compared with adiabatic-impulse predictions.

Phase band crossing at T/2 in the 1D XY model with a two-rate drive.

Abstract

We study the Floquet phase diagram of two-dimensional Dirac materials such as graphene and the one-dimensional (1D) spin-1/2 $XY$ model in a transverse field in the presence of periodic time-varying terms in their Hamiltonians in the low drive frequency ($\omega$) regime where standard $1/\omega$ perturbative expansions fail. For graphene, such periodic time dependent terms are generated via the application of external radiation of amplitude $A_0$ and time period $T = 2\pi/\omega$, while for the 1D $XY$ model, they result from a two-rate drive protocol with time-dependent magnetic field and nearest-neighbor couplings between the spins. Using the adiabatic-impulse method, we provide several semi-analytic criteria for the occurrence of changes in the topology of the phase bands of such systems. For irradiated graphene, we point out the role of the symmetries of $H(t)$ and $U$ behind such topology changes. Our analysis reveals that at low frequencies, phase band topology changes may also happen at $t= T/3, 2T/3$ (apart from $t=T$). We chart out the phase diagrams at $t=T/3, 2T/3,\, {\rm and }\, T$ as a function of $A_0$ and $T$ using exact numerics, and compare them with the prediction of the adiabatic-impulse method. We show that several characteristics of these phase diagrams can be analytically understood from results obtained using the adiabatic-impulse method and point out the crucial contribution of the high-symmetry points in the graphene Brillouin zone to these diagrams. Finally we study the 1D $XY$ model with a two-rate driving protocol using the adiabatic-impulse method and exact numerics revealing a phase band crossing at $t=T/2$ and $k=\pi/2$. We also study the anomalous end modes generated by such a drive. We suggest experiments to test our theory.