Time-dependent driving of quantum systems has emerged as a powerful tool to engineer exotic phases far from thermal equilibrium, but in the presence of many-body interactions it also leads to runaway heating, so that generic systems are believed to heat up until they reach a featureless infinite-temperature state. Understanding the mechanisms by which such a heat death can be slowed down or even avoided is a major goal—one such mechanism is to drive toward an even distribution of electrons in momentum space. Here we show how such a mechanism avoids runaway heating for an interacting charge-density-wave chain with a macroscopic number of conserved quantities when driven by a strong dc electric field; minibands with nontrivial distribution functions develop as the current is prematurely driven to zero. Moreover, when approaching a zero-temperature resonance, the field strength can tune between positive, negative, or close-to-infinite effective temperatures for each miniband. Our results suggest that nontrivial metastable distribution functions should be realized in the prethermal regime of quantum systems coupled to slow bosonic modes.
%0 Journal Article
%1 PhysRevLett.130.266401
%A Weber, Manuel
%A Freericks, James K.
%D 2023
%I American Physical Society
%J Phys. Rev. Lett.
%K a
%N 26
%P 266401
%R 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.266401
%T Electronic mechanism that quenches field-driven heating as illustrated with the static holstein model
%U https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.266401
%V 130
%X Time-dependent driving of quantum systems has emerged as a powerful tool to engineer exotic phases far from thermal equilibrium, but in the presence of many-body interactions it also leads to runaway heating, so that generic systems are believed to heat up until they reach a featureless infinite-temperature state. Understanding the mechanisms by which such a heat death can be slowed down or even avoided is a major goal—one such mechanism is to drive toward an even distribution of electrons in momentum space. Here we show how such a mechanism avoids runaway heating for an interacting charge-density-wave chain with a macroscopic number of conserved quantities when driven by a strong dc electric field; minibands with nontrivial distribution functions develop as the current is prematurely driven to zero. Moreover, when approaching a zero-temperature resonance, the field strength can tune between positive, negative, or close-to-infinite effective temperatures for each miniband. Our results suggest that nontrivial metastable distribution functions should be realized in the prethermal regime of quantum systems coupled to slow bosonic modes.
@article{PhysRevLett.130.266401,
abstract = {Time-dependent driving of quantum systems has emerged as a powerful tool to engineer exotic phases far from thermal equilibrium, but in the presence of many-body interactions it also leads to runaway heating, so that generic systems are believed to heat up until they reach a featureless infinite-temperature state. Understanding the mechanisms by which such a heat death can be slowed down or even avoided is a major goal—one such mechanism is to drive toward an even distribution of electrons in momentum space. Here we show how such a mechanism avoids runaway heating for an interacting charge-density-wave chain with a macroscopic number of conserved quantities when driven by a strong dc electric field; minibands with nontrivial distribution functions develop as the current is prematurely driven to zero. Moreover, when approaching a zero-temperature resonance, the field strength can tune between positive, negative, or close-to-infinite effective temperatures for each miniband. Our results suggest that nontrivial metastable distribution functions should be realized in the prethermal regime of quantum systems coupled to slow bosonic modes.},
added-at = {2024-02-05T17:23:41.000+0100},
author = {Weber, Manuel and Freericks, James K.},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2c20c85a62eeb024450a9faa45032a124/ctqmat},
day = 23,
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.266401},
interhash = {a1f7acadf0d7118e6ed1a1cb9c9492b4},
intrahash = {c20c85a62eeb024450a9faa45032a124},
journal = {Phys. Rev. Lett.},
keywords = {a},
month = {06},
number = 26,
numpages = {6},
pages = 266401,
publisher = {American Physical Society},
timestamp = {2024-02-05T17:23:41.000+0100},
title = {Electronic mechanism that quenches field-driven heating as illustrated with the static holstein model},
url = {https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.266401},
volume = 130,
year = 2023
}