Engineering Floquet Dynamical Quantum Phase Transition

TL;DR

This paper presents a versatile method to engineer and control Floquet dynamical quantum phase transitions in spin chains using multi-frequency periodic driving, revealing tunable nonanalytic behaviors and topological features.

Contribution

It introduces a quench-free, generic approach to induce and manipulate FDQPTs with multiple frequencies, expanding control over nonequilibrium quantum phase transitions.

Findings

Multiple FDQPTs occur within each driving period.

Number and timing of cusps can be tuned by Hamiltonian parameters.

Dynamical topological order parameter detects topological features.

Abstract

Floquet dynamical quantum phase transitions (FDQPTs) are signified by recurrent nonanalytic behaviors of observables in time. In this work, we introduce a quench-free and generic approach to engineer and control FDQPTs for both pure and mixed Floquet states. By applying time-periodic modulations with two commensurate driving frequencies to a general class of spin chain model, we find multiple FDQPTs within each driving period. The nonanalytic cusps of return probability form sublattice structures in time domain. Notably, the number and time-locations of these cusps can be flexibly controlled by tuning the Hamiltonian parameter and the higher frequency of the drive. We further employ the dynamical topological order parameter (DTOP), which shows a quantized jump whenever a DQPT happens, to identify the topological feature of FDQPTs. Our findings reveal the advantage of engineering nonequilibrium phase transitions with multi-frequency driving fields.