Dynamical phases of higher dimensional Floquet CFTs

Authors

• Diptarka Das, Indian Institute of Technology KanpurFollow
• Sumit R. Das, University of KentuckyFollow
• Arnab Kundu, Saha Institute of Nuclear PhysicsFollow
• Krishnendu Sengupta, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, IndiaFollow

Abstract

This paper investigates the dynamical phases of Floquet Conformal Field Theories (CFTs) in space-time dimensions greater than two. Building upon our previous work which introduced quaternionic representations for studying Floquet dynamics in higher-dimensional CFTs, we now explore more general square pulse drive protocols that go beyond a single SU(1,1) subgroup. We demonstrate that, for multi-step drive protocols, the system exhibits distinct dynamical phases characterized by the nature of the eigenvalues of the quaternionic matrix representing time evolution in a single cycle, leading to different stroboscopic responses. Our analysis establishes a fundamental geometric interpretation where these dynamical phases directly correspond to the presence or absence of Killing horizons in the base space of the CFT and in a higher dimensional AdS space on which a putative dual lives. The heating phase is associated with a non-extremal horizon, the critical phase with an extremal horizon which disappears in the non-heating phase. We develop perturbative approaches to compute the Floquet Hamiltonians in different regimes and show, how tuning drive parameters can lead to horizons, providing a geometric framework for understanding heating phenomena in driven conformal systems.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

Notes/Citation Information

Copyright D. Das et al. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Published by the SciPost Foundation.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.21468/SciPostPhys.20.2.045

Funding Information

The work of S.R.D. is supported by National Science Foundation grants NSF-PHY/211673 and NSF-PHY/2410647, and a Jack and Linda Gill Chair Professorship. KS thanks DST for support through SERB project JCB/2021/000030. AK is partially supported by CEFIPRA 6304 − 3, CRG/2021/004539 of Govt. of India. AK further acknowledges the support of Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and for the hospitality of Theoretical Physics III, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Wurzburg during the course of this work.

Repository Citation

Das, Diptarka; Das, Sumit R.; Kundu, Arnab; and Sengupta, Krishnendu, "Dynamical phases of higher dimensional Floquet CFTs" (2026). Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications. 763.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/physastron_facpub/763