Mott, Floquet, and the response of periodically driven Anderson insulators

Advances in cold atomic systems have recently provided direct access to the rich physics of Anderson localization and nonequilibrium phenomena. Here, the authors revisit the canonical problem of an Anderson insulator in a spatially uniform, oscillating electric field, studied famously by Mott. They go beyond his linear response analysis by a combination of perturbation theory, Rabi oscillation theory, Landau-Zener tunneling ideas, and Floquet theory. They identify three qualitatively distinct regimes beyond Mott's frequency-dependent hopping and present detailed numerical simulations verifying their properties.