Strong-Drive Floquet Engineering of Interacting Qudits: From Finite-Duration Controls to Emergent Symmetry

Quantum Physics arXiv:2609.04309 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 3 Sep 2026] Title:Strong-Drive Floquet Engineering of Interacting Qudits: From Finite-Duration Controls to Emergent Symmetry Authors:Ryan Scott, V. W. Scarola View a PDF of the paper titled Strong-Drive Floquet Engineering of Interacting Qudits: From Finite-Duration Controls to Emergent Symmetry, by Ryan Scott and V. W. Scarola View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Floquet driving uses periodic controls to tailor the behavior of quantum systems, with applications in quantum analogue simulation, sensing, and the protection of quantum information. Most approaches are designed using idealized, instantaneous pulses, even though experiments necessarily use pulses with finite duration and shape. This mismatch becomes especially challenging for interacting $d$-level systems, or qudits, because the number of possible controls grows rapidly with the number of levels. We develop a strong-drive Floquet theory that incorporates experimentally realizable pulse waveforms directly into the design of the effective interactions. The pulse duration, amplitude, and shape therefore become useful control parameters rather than sources of error. We show that systems with more than two levels offer capabilities unavailable in qubit systems: finite-duration driving can create new interactions that are absent from the original system and can substantially change its symmetries. We demonstrate these capabilities for interacting three-level systems. A single pulse transforms a diagonal interaction into a quantum spin-1 model dominated by nematic interactions, while pulse protocols motivated by trapped ultracold polar molecules produce models with enlarged $SU(2)\times U(1)$ and $SU(3)$ symmetries. Numerical tests of both short-time evolution and many-body dynamics confirm the accuracy of the resulting description. Our results provide a scalable analytical framework for designing finite-duration controls in interacting qudit platforms. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) Cite as: arXiv:2609.04309 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2609.04309v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.04309 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Vito W. Scarola [view email] [v1] Thu, 3 Sep 2026 18:00:00 UTC (2,077 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Strong-Drive Floquet Engineering of Interacting Qudits: From Finite-Duration Controls to Emergent Symmetry, by Ryan Scott and V. W. ScarolaView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-09 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.str-el References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)