Floquet engineering Higgs dynamics in time-periodic superconductors

Abstract

Higgs modes emerge in superconductors as collective excitations of the order-parameter amplitude when periodically driven by electromagnetic radiation. In this work, we develop a Floquet approach to study Higgs modes in superconductors under time-periodic driving, where the dynamics of the order parameter is captured by anomalous Floquet Green's functions. We show that the Floquet description is particularly powerful as it allows one to exploit the time-periodic nature of the driving, thus considerably reducing the complexity of the time-dependent problem. Interestingly, the Floquet approach is also enlightening because it naturally offers a physical explanation for the renormalized steady-state order parameter as a result of photon-assisted transitions between Floquet sidebands. We demonstrate the usefulness of Floquet engineering Higgs modes in time-periodic s-wave superconductors.