Linear-response theory in Floquet systems

Abstract: Nonequilibrium quantum physics greatly simplifies in the case of time-periodic Hamiltonians, since Floquet theory provides an analogue to Bloch's theorem in the time domain. Still, the formal properties of Floquet many-body theory remain underexplored. Here, we develop linear response theory for Floquet systems, in the sense that we have a time-periodic potential of arbitrary strength and a perturbatively small but non-periodic probing field. As an application, we derive the analogy of Fermi's Golden Rule and the photoemission spectrum of a many-electron system. As in the equilibrium case, the latter is related to the spectral function which is positive definite. We also analyze the parameter dependence of the controllable photoemission spectra by virtue of Floquet engineering.