Out-of-time-order correlations and Floquet dynamical quantum phase transition

Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) progressively play an important role in different fields of physics, particularly in the nonequilibrium quantum many-body systems. In this paper, we show that OTOCs can be used to probe the Floquet dynamical quantum phase transitions (FDQPTs). We investigate the OTOCs of two exactly solvable Floquet spin models, namely, Floquet XY chain and synchronized Floquet XY model. We show that the border of driving frequency range, over which the Floquet XY model shows FDQPT, is signaled by the global minimum of the infinite-temperature time averaged OTOC. Moreover, our results manifest that OTOCs decay algebraically in the long time, for which the decay exponent in the FDQPT region is different from that in the region where the system does not show FDQPTs. In addition, for the synchronized Floquet XY model, which reveals FDQPT at any driving frequency depending on the initial infinite or finite temperature, the imaginary part of the OTOCs becomes zero whenever the system shows FDQPT.