Reservoir-induced stabilization of a periodically driven many-body system

Area of Science:

• * Condensed Matter Physics
• * Statistical Mechanics
• * Quantum Dynamics

Background:

• * Periodically driven many-body systems often suffer from persistent heating, limiting exploration of their rich phenomenology in both classical and quantum regimes.
• * Stabilization of nontrivial steady states is crucial for understanding and utilizing these systems.
• * Coupling to a thermal reservoir is a potential strategy to mitigate heating effects.

Purpose of the Study:

• * To investigate the extent to which coupling to a large thermal reservoir can stabilize nontrivial steady states in periodically driven systems.
• * To explore the dynamics of classical spin chains coupled to a thermal reservoir under external driving.
• * To understand the emergence of steady states at different driving frequencies.

Main Methods:

• * Modeling the system and reservoir as classical spin chains.
• * Applying driving through a rotating magnetic field.
• * Simulating the Hamiltonian dynamics of the coupled system-reservoir setup.

Main Results:

• * The intuitive limits of infinite and vanishing driving frequencies smoothly extend into continuous regimes.
• * At high frequencies, the driven system approaches a Floquet-type Gibbs state at the reservoir temperature.
• * At low frequencies, a global synchronized Gibbs state emerges, potentially with a temperature different from the reservoir's initial temperature.

Conclusions:

• * Coupling to a thermal reservoir can effectively stabilize nontrivial steady states in periodically driven many-body systems.
• * The system's steady-state behavior depends significantly on the driving frequency, leading to distinct Gibbs states.
• * The observed phenomenology suggests potential generic applicability beyond the specific model studied.