Generalized Adiabatic Theorems: Quantum Systems Driven by Modulated Time-Varying Fields

Abstract

We present generalized adiabatic theorems for closed and open quantum systems that can be applied to slow modulations of rapidly varying fields, such as oscillatory fields that occur in optical experiments and light-induced processes. The generalized adiabatic theorems show that a sufficiently slow modulation conserves the dynamical modes of time-dependent reference Hamiltonians. In the limiting case of modulations of static fields, the standard adiabatic theorems are recovered. Applying these results to periodic fields shows that they remain in Floquet states rather than in energy eigenstates. More generally, these adiabatic theorems can be applied to transformations of arbitrary time-dependent fields, by accounting for the rapidly varying part of the field through the dynamical normal modes, and treating the slow modulation adiabatically. As examples, we apply the generalized theorem to (a) predict the dynamics of a two-level system driven by a frequency-modulated resonant oscillation, a pathological situation beyond the applicability of traditional adiabatic theorems, and (b) to show that open quantum systems driven by slowly turned-on incoherent light, such as biomolecules under natural illumination conditions, can display only coherences that survive in the steady state.