Floquet realization of prethermal Meissner phase in a two-leg flux ladder

Abstract: We show that a periodically driven two-leg flux ladder hosting interacting hardcore bosons exhibits a prethermal Meissner phase for large drive amplitudes and at special drive frequencies. Such a prethermal Meissner phase is characterized by a finite time-averaged chiral current. We find an analytic expression of these frequencies using Floquet perturbation theory. Our analysis reveals that the presence of the prethermal Meissner phase is tied to the emergence of strong Hilbert space fragmentation in these driven ladders. We support our analytical results by numerical study of finite-size flux ladders using exact diagonalization and discuss experiments using ultracold dipolar atom platforms that may test our theory.