Resonant pair production and flat band melting in a driven Rydberg chain
Abstract
We study a Rydberg chain subjected to a two-tone periodic drive of the detuning Δ(t) and Rabi frequency Ω(t) at frequencies ω1 and ω2=νω1 respectively with ν∈ Z. In the strong Rydberg blockade limit, such a system reduces to the PXP model and exhibits exact Floquet flat band. Here we determine, using a time-dependent Schrieffer-Wolff transformation, the domain of validity of such PXP dynamics once the blockade-violating processes are taken into account. We study the melting of such flat bands in the presence of strong, but finite, blockade strength. Using Floquet perturbation theory (FPT), we identify two mechanisms for such melting; the first occurs due to the presence of many-body resonances involving resonant production of nearest-neighbor Rydberg excitation pairs while the second involves virtual processes that access intermediate states with such pairs. Our analytical FPT results match with those obtained using exact diagonalization on a finite chain. We study the dynamics for |vac⟩ (Fock state with no Rydberg excitation), |ℤ2⟩, and |ℤ3⟩ (Fock states with Rydberg excitations on alternate and every third site respectively) initial states. We find that |vac⟩ shows exceptional stability against resonant pair formation while |ℤ3⟩ exhibits flat band melting via virtual processes away from the direct resonances. We find oscillatory dynamics with large time period for the |ℤ2⟩ initial state and the presence of Floquet scars that have large overlap with |ℤ3⟩ state; these phenomena occur due to processes that are absent in the PXP limit. We propose measurement of nearest neighbor pair correlation functions using Rydberg atom quantum simulator platforms as an accessible experimental probe for these effects.
Related
- Sensitivity Enhancement of S-Band Rydberg Atom Microwave Receiver Enabled by Resonant Cavity Field Confinement
- Profiling a Rydberg-Atom Electric Field Sensor for Off-Resonant Detection of Sub-100 MHz RF Signals
- Dressed Floquet scars from protected zero modes in a Rydberg chain
- Krylov complexity of a tilted extended Bose-Hubbard chain with Rydberg-dressed interactions
- Nonthermal Dynamics of a One-dimensional Rydberg-atom Chain with Constraint Four-body Interactions
BibTeX
@misc{banerjee2026resonant,
title = {{Resonant pair production and flat band melting in a driven Rydberg chain}},
author = {Tista Banerjee and K. Sengupta},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.22532},
eprint = {2610.22532},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.22532},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Resonant pair production and flat band melting in a driven Rydberg chain
AU - Tista Banerjee
AU - K. Sengupta
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/15
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.22532
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.22532
AB - We study a Rydberg chain subjected to a two-tone periodic drive of the detuning Δ(t) and Rabi frequency Ω(t) at frequencies ω_1 and ω_2=νω_1 respectively with ν∈ Z. In the strong Rydberg blockade limit, such a system reduces to the PXP model and exhibits exact Floquet flat band. Here we determine, using a time-dependent Schrieffer-Wolff transformation, the domain of validity of such PXP dynamics once the blockade-violating processes are taken into account. We study the melting of such flat bands in the presence of strong, but finite, blockade strength. Using Floquet perturbation theory (FPT), we identify two mechanisms for such melting; the first occurs due to the presence of many-body resonances involving resonant production of nearest-neighbor Rydberg excitation pairs while the second involves virtual processes that access intermediate states with such pairs. Our analytical FPT results match with those obtained using exact diagonalization on a finite chain. We study the dynamics for |vac⟩ (Fock state with no Rydberg excitation), |ℤ_2⟩, and |ℤ_3⟩ (Fock states with Rydberg excitations on alternate and every third site respectively) initial states. We find that |vac⟩ shows exceptional stability against resonant pair formation while |ℤ_3⟩ exhibits flat band melting via virtual processes away from the direct resonances. We find oscillatory dynamics with large time period for the |ℤ_2⟩ initial state and the presence of Floquet scars that have large overlap with |ℤ_3⟩ state; these phenomena occur due to processes that are absent in the PXP limit. We propose measurement of nearest neighbor pair correlation functions using Rydberg atom quantum simulator platforms as an accessible experimental probe for these effects.
ER -