Rigorous Bounds on the Heating Rate in Thue-Morse Quasiperiodically and Randomly Driven Quantum Many-Body Systems

In the last decade researchers have realised that simply shaking a collection of quantum particles can give rise to new phases of matter without any counterparts in undriven equilibrium systems. However, most of these are rather delicate and require a strictly periodic shaking because otherwise the system would quickly absorb energy heating up to a boring featureless state.

Now researchers at ICL discovered that also aperiodically driven quantum systems may show similar phenomena. Johannes Knolle and his team showed that under general conditions they can delay the heating to a featureless state up to very long times. It opens the window for hitherto unknown non-equillibirum phases, which they showcase with a novel time-quasicrystal.

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.050602