Electronic Floquet Liquid Crystals

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how Floquet engineering can induce non-equilibrium correlated states with broken symmetry in semiconductors by manipulating the density of states through periodic drives, revealing new ways to control electronic phases.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of Floquet engineering to create and analyze non-equilibrium correlated states with spontaneous symmetry breaking in semiconductors.

Findings

Phase diagram matching numerical and phenomenological models

Conditions for spontaneous symmetry breaking identified

Floquet engineering enables control of correlated electron states

Abstract

"Floquet engineering" - designing band structures "on-demand" through the application of coherent time-periodic drives - has recently emerged as a powerful tool for creating new topological and anomalous phases of matter. In this manuscript, we show that the same principle can be applied to create non-equilibrium correlated states with spontaneously broken symmetry in a lightly doped semiconductor. The periodic drive provides means for obtaining large electronic densities of states necessary for the broken symmetry phase. The phase transition occurs in the steady-state of the system achieved due to interplay between the coherent external drive, electron-electron interactions, and dissipative processes arising from the coupling to phonons and the electromagnetic environment. We obtain the phase diagram of the system using numerical calculations that match predictions obtained from a phenomenological treatment and discuss the conditions on the system and the external drive under which spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs. Our results imply that Floquet engineering of the density of states provides a new route for generating and controlling correlated states of electrons with external fields.