Lennart Dabelow

Predicting the effect of time-dependent forcing on many-body quantum systems

Changing some of its parameters over time is a paradigmatic way of driving an otherwise isolated system out of equilibrium and an important ingredient for operating quantum computers and simulators. Building on random matrix theory, we present an analytical nonlinear response theory for large classes of many-body quantum systems subject to parametrically time-dependent driving. The underlying idea is to extend the framework of equilibrium statistical mechanics, where macroscopic properties of large systems can be efficiently described by ensembles of microstates with a few macroscopic constraints, to driven systems out of equilibrium. We verify the analytical predictions by comparison with numerical results for various concrete example systems.