Floquet engineering of the Luttinger Hamiltonian

Abstract: Within the Floquet theory of periodically driven quantum systems, we developed the theory of light-induced modification of electronic states in semiconductor materials described by the Luttinger Hamiltonian (the electronic term $\Gamma_8$). Particularly, exact solutions of the Floquet problem are found for the band edge in the cases of linearly and circularly polarized irradiation. It is shown that the irradiation changes electron effective masses near the band edge, induces anisotropy of the electron dispersion and splits the bands. It is demonstrated that the light-induced band splitting strongly depends on the light polarization. Namely, the circularly polarized light acts similarly to a stationary magnetic field and lifts the spin degeneracy of electron branches, whereas a linearly polarized light does not affect the spin degeneracy and only splits the bands in the center of the Brillouin zone. The present theory can be applied to describe electronic properties of various semiconductor structures irradiated by an electromagnetic field in the broad frequency range.