English

Multiple-period Floquet states and time-translation symmetry breaking in quantum oscillators

Quantum Physics 2017-11-29 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

We study the breaking of the discrete time-translation symmetry in small periodically driven quantum systems. Such systems are intermediate between large closed systems and small dissipative systems, which both display the symmetry breaking, but have qualitatively different dynamics. As a nontrivial example we consider period tripling in a quantum nonlinear oscillator. We show that, for moderately strong driving, the period tripling is robust on an exponentially long time scale, which is further extended by an even weak decoherence.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1702.07931,
  title  = {Multiple-period Floquet states and time-translation symmetry breaking in quantum oscillators},
  author = {Yaxing Zhang and J. Gosner and S. M. Girvin and J. Ankerhold and M. I. Dykman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.07931},
  year   = {2017}
}