Periodically driven perturbed CFTs: the sine-Gordon model

TL;DR

This paper studies a time-periodically driven sine-Gordon model using a truncated conformal space approach, revealing how periodic driving affects its spectrum, integrability, and phase structure, with potential applications to other driven conformal field theories.

Contribution

It develops a TCSA method for periodically driven perturbed CFTs and analyzes the Floquet spectrum of the sine-Gordon model under various driving protocols.

Findings

Large frequency driving simplifies the spectrum analysis.

Periodic drive can break integrability and induce phase transitions.

Two-frequency drive leads to new spectral states and complex dynamics.

Abstract

We analyze a version of the sine-Gordon model in which the strength of the cosine potential has a periodic dependence on time. This model can be considered as the continuum limit of the many body generalization of the Kapitza pendulum. Based on the perturbed CFT point of view, we develop a truncated conformal space approach (TCSA) to investigate the Floquet quasienergy spectrum. We focus on the effective behaviour for large driving frequencies, which we also derive exactly. Depending on the driving protocol, we can recover the original sine-Gordon model or its two-frequency version. The rich structure of the two-frequency model implies that the time-periodic drive can break integrability, can lead to new states in the spectrum or can result in a phase transition. Our method is applicable for any periodically driven perturbed conformal field theories.