Multiphoton resonance band and Bloch-Siegert shift in a bichromatically driven qubit

Abstract: We study the resonance and dynamics of a qubit exposed to a strong aperiodic bichromatic field by using a periodic counter-rotating hybridized rotating wave (CHRW) Hamiltonian, which is derived from the original Hamiltonian with the unitary transformations under a reasonable approximation and enables the application of the Floquet theory. It is found that the consistency between the CHRW results and numerically exact generalized-Floquet-theory (GFT) results in the valid regime of the former while the widely used rotating-wave approximation (RWA) breaks down. We illustrate that the resonance exhibits band structure and the Bloch-Siegert shifts induced by the counter-rotating couplings of the bichromatic field become notable at the multiphoton resonance band. In addition, the CHRW method is found to have a great advantage of efficiency over the GFT approach particularly in the low beat-frequency case where the latter converges very slowly. The present CHRW method provides a highly efficient way to calculate the resonance frequency incorporating the Bloch-Siegert shift and provides insights into the effects of the counter-rotating couplings of the bichromatic field in the strong-driving regimes.