Characterizations of prethermal states in periodically driven many-body systems with unbounded chaotic diffusion

Abstract: We introduce well-defined characterizations of prethermal states in realistic periodically driven many-body systems with unbounded chaotic diffusion of the kinetic energy. These systems, interacting arrays of periodically kicked rotors, are paradigmatic models of many-body chaos theory. We show that the prethermal states in these systems are well described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble based essentially on the average Hamiltonian. The latter is the quasi-conserved quantity in the prethermal state and the ensemble is characterized by the temperature of the state. An explicit exact expression for this temperature is derived. Also, using arguments based on chaos theory, we demonstrate that the lifetime of the prethermal state is exponentially long in the inverse of the temperature. Our analytical results, in particular those for the temperature and the lifetime of the prethermal state, agree well with numerical observations.