Breakdown of Disorder-Suppressed Floquet Heating under Two-Frequency Driving

TL;DR

This study investigates how two-frequency Floquet driving and disorder fluctuations can cause breakdowns in disorder-protected Floquet phases, revealing resonance effects and implications for quantum sensing.

Contribution

It demonstrates the failure of disorder-induced Floquet phase protection under two-frequency driving and disorder fluctuations, supported by experimental nuclear-spin network observations.

Findings

Sharp peaks in late-time heating rate at double- and triple-spin-flip resonances.

Resonance absorption linked to stochastic electron-spin dynamics and multi-photon resonance.

Breakdown of prethermalization suggests new quantum sensing methods.

Abstract

Periodic (Floquet) driving enables Hamiltonian engineering and nonequilibrium phases, but interacting systems eventually heat by absorbing energy from the drive. Disorder can greatly delay this process, yielding long-lived prethermal plateaus. Here we show that this protection can fail when pulse-train control introduces a second driving frequency and when the disorder fluctuates. Using a natural-abundance 13C nuclear-spin network in diamond, we observe sharp peaks in the late-time heating rate at the double- and triple-spin-flip resonance conditions predicted by bimodal Floquet interference, and track their evolution with drive frequency. A switching-noise model attributes the resonant absorption to stochastic electron-spin dynamics that intermittently tune rare nuclear clusters into multi-photon resonance. Our results reveal a resonance-activated limit for disorder-stabilized Floquet phases and suggest new routes to DC-field quantum sensing based on an abrupt breakdown of prethermalization.