Unconventional fermionic pairing states in a monochromatically tilted optical lattice

Abstract

We study the one-dimensional attractive Fermionic Hubbard model under the influence of periodic driving with the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group method. We show that the system can be driven into an unconventional pairing state characterized by a condensate made of Cooper-pairs with a finite center-of-mass momentum similar to a Fulde-Ferrell state. We obtain results both in the laboratory and the rotating reference frames demonstrating that the momentum of the condensate can be finely tuned by changing the ratio between the amplitude and the frequency of the driving. In particular, by quenching this ratio to the value corresponding to suppression of the tunnelling and the Coulomb interaction strength to zero, we are able to "freeze" the condensate. We finally study the effects of different initial conditions, and compare our numerical results to those obtained from a time-independent Floquet theory in the large frequency regime. Our work offers the possibility of engineering and controlling unconventional pairing states in fermionic condensates.