Statistics of work distribution in periodically driven closed quantum systems

Abstract

We study the statistics of the work distribution $P(w)$ in a $d-$dimensional closed quantum system with linear dimension $L$ subjected to a periodic drive with frequency $\omega_0$. We show that after an integer number of periods of the drive, the corresponding rate function $I(w)= -\ln[P(w)]/L^d$ satisfies an universal lower bound $I(0)\ge n_d$ and has a zero at $w=Q$, where $n_d$ and $Q$ are the defect density and residual energy generated during the drive. We supplement our results by calculating $I(w)$ for a class of $d$-dimensional integrable models and show that it has oscillatory dependence on $\omega_0$ originating from Stuckelberg interference generated during multiple passage through intermediate quantum critical points or regions during the drive. We suggest experiments to test our theory.