Dr. Iliya Desin
California Institute of Technology
Inducing Non-Equilibrium Phases in Semiconductors with Time-Periodic Drives
Location: 1080 Physics Research Building
Faculty Host: Ilya Gruzberg
Abstract: “Floquet engineering” - designing band structures “on-demand" through an application of coherent time-periodic drives, has recently emerged as a powerful tool for inducing exotic phenomena in ordinary materials. In this talk, I will discuss the application of Floquet engineering for inducing novel non-equilibrium phases of matter in steady states of time-periodically driven semiconductors. The steady states are achieved due to the interplay between the coherent external drive, electron-electron interactions, and dissipative processes arising from the coupling to phonons and the electromagnetic environment. I will show that despite the highly non-equilibrium nature of these systems, by judicially choosing the properties of the material, the external drive, and the environments, their steady states can exhibit topological transport and strongly correlated phases such as a novel electronic liquid gyro-crystalline phase.
