RESUMEN
Periodically driven Kitaev chains show a rich phase diagram as the amplitude and frequency of the drive is varied, with topological phase transitions separating regions with different number of Majorana zero and π modes. We explore whether the critical point separating different phases of the periodically driven chain may be characterized by a universal central charge. We affirmatively answer this question by studying the entanglement entropy (EE) numerically and analytically for the lowest entangled many particle eigenstate at arbitrary nonstroboscopic and stroboscopic times. We find that the EE at the critical point scales logarithmically with a time-independent central charge, and that the Floquet micromotion gives only subleading corrections to the EE. This result also generalizes to multicritical points where the EE is found to have a central charge that is the sum of the central charges of the intersecting critical lines.
RESUMEN
Recent advances in ultrafast measurement in cold atoms, as well as pump-probe spectroscopy of K_{3}C_{60} films, have opened the possibility of rapidly quenching systems of interacting fermions to, and across, a finite temperature superfluid transition. However, determining that a transient state has approached a second-order critical point is difficult, as standard equilibrium techniques are inapplicable. We show that the approach to the superfluid critical point in a transient state may be detected via time-resolved transport measurements, such as the optical conductivity. We leverage the fact that quenching to the vicinity of the critical point produces a highly time dependent density of superfluid fluctuations, which affect the conductivity in two ways. First, by inelastic scattering between the fermions and the fluctuations, and second by direct conduction through the fluctuations, with the latter providing a lower resistance current carrying channel. The competition between these two effects leads to nonmonotonic behavior in the time-resolved optical conductivity, providing a signature of the critical transient state.