Parametric instability in periodically driven Luttinger liquids

Abstract

We analyze the properties of a Luttinger liquid under the influence of a periodic driving of the interaction strength. Irrespective of the details the driven system develops an instability due to a parametric resonance. For slow and fast driving, however, we identify intermediate long-lived meta-stable states at constant time-averaged internal energies. Due to the instability perturbations in the fermionic density are amplified exponentially leading to the buildup of a superlattice. The momentum distribution develops a terrace structure due to scattering processes that can be associated with the absorption of quanta of the driving frequency.