Long-lived non-thermal states in pumped one-dimensional systems of hard-core bosons

TL;DR

This paper investigates the dynamics of charge density wave states in a one-dimensional system of hard-core bosons under laser pulse excitation, revealing long-lived non-thermal states that depend on system size and integrability.

Contribution

It introduces a protocol to control and identify long-lived non-thermal states in a pumped 1D bosonic system, highlighting their dependence on system size and perturbations.

Findings

Long-lived non-thermal charge density wave states are observed.

These states' lifetimes increase with system size.

Integrability-breaking perturbations significantly reduce state lifetimes.

Abstract

We study a unitary time evolution of a symmetry-broken state in a form of a charge density wave in a finite system of interacting hard-core bosons, which can be mapped onto the XXZ Heisenberg chain. Moreover, we introduce a spatially-homogenous and time-dependent vector potential that mimics a short laser pulse. We establish the range of amplitudes of the vector potential for which the onset of charge density wave order can be controlled. We propose a protocol that reveals non-thermal long-lived states, which are characterized by a non-zero charge density wave order translated by one lattice site with respect to its initial formation. The life times of these states are large in comparison to all typical times given by the parameters of the system. They increase with the number of lattice sites, but are significantly suppressed by the integrablility breaking perturbations. In view of these findings, we speculate that the long-lived non-thermal states exist in the thermodynamic limit.