Effective Hamiltonians for fastly driven many-body lattice systems

Abstract: We consider 1D lattices described by Hubbard or Bose-Hubbard models, in the presence of periodic high-frequency perturbations, such as uniform ac force or modulation of hopping coefficients. Effective Hamiltonians for interacting particles are derived using an averaging method resembling classical canonical perturbation theory. As is known, a high-frequency force may renormalize hopping coefficients, causing interesting phenomena such as coherent destruction of tunnelling and creation of artificial gauge fields. We find explicitly additional corrections to the effective Hamiltonians due to interactions, corresponding to non-trivial processes such as single-particle density-dependent tunnelling, correlated pair hoppings, nearest neighbour interactions, etc. Some of these processes arise also in multiband lattice models, and are capable to give rise to a rich variety of quantum phases. The apparent contradiction with other methods, e.g. Floquet-Magnus expansion, is explained. The results may be useful for designing effective Hamiltonian models in experiments with ultracold atoms, as well as in the field of ultrafast nonequilibrium magnetism. An example of manipulating exchange interaction in a Mott-Hubbard insulator is considered, where our corrections play an essential role.