Floquet metal-to-insulator phase transitions in semiconductor nanowires.

Abstract

We study steady states of semiconductor nanowires subjected to strong resonant time-periodic drives. The steady states arise from the balance between electron-phonon scattering, electron-hole recombination via photoemission, and Auger scattering processes. We show that tuning the strength of the driving field drives a transition between an electron-hole metal (EHM) phase and a Floquet insulator (FI) phase. We study the critical point controlling this transition. The EHM-to-FI transition can be observed by monitoring the presence of peaks in the density-density response function, which are associated with the Fermi momentum of the EHM phase and are absent in the FI phase. Our results may help guide future studies toward inducing exotic nonequilibrium phases of matter by periodic driving.