Loschmidt echo and dynamical fidelity in periodically driven quantum systems

Abstract

We study the dynamical fidelity $\mathcal{F} (t)$ and the Loschmidt echo $\mathcal{L} (t)$, following a periodic driving of the transverse magnetic field of a quantum Ising chain (back and forth across the quantum critical point) by calculating the overlap between the initial ground state and the state reached after $n$ periods $\tau$. We show that $\log{\mathcal{F}}(n\tau)/L$ (the logarithm of the fidelity per-site) reaches a steady value in the asymptotic limit $n\to \infty$, and we derive an exact analytical expression for this quantity. Remarkably, the steady state value of $[\log{\mathcal{F}}(n\tau\to \infty)]/L$ shows memory of non-trivial phase information which is instead hidden in the case of thermodynamic quantities; this conclusion, moreover, is not restricted to 1-dimensional models.