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Uniform electron gas in the presence of space-time periodic potentials: Floquet-Bloch and linear-response theory

Ayan Pal1,2, Erik G. C. P. van Loon1,2, and Ferdi Aryasetiawan1,3

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Phys. Rev. B 114, 175133 – Published 24 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/q754-jzkj

Abstract

Nonequilibrium quantum physics greatly simplifies in the case of time-periodic Hamiltonians, since Floquet theory provides an analog to Bloch's theorem in the time domain. Still, the formal properties of Floquet many-body theory remain underexplored. Here, we study what happens to the uniform electron gas when a space-time periodic potential of arbitrary strength is applied, which leads to band splitting. The case of a potential traveling at constant speed is special, since the problem can be made time independent by transforming to a comoving frame. We perform linear-response theory, in the sense that we apply an additional perturbatively small but nonperiodic probing field, for which we illustrate 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-Bloch engineering.

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Phys. Rev. B 114, 175133– Published 24 September, 2026
  • Received 10 June 2025
  • Revised 28 August 2026
  • Accepted 31 August 2026
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