We identify a type of periodic evolution that appears in driven quantum systems. Provided that the instantaneous (adiabatic) energies are equidistant we show how such systems can be mapped to (time-dependent) tilted single-band lattice models. Having established this mapping, the dynamics can be understood in terms of Bloch oscillations in the instantaneous energy basis. In our lattice model the site-localized states are the adiabatic ones, and the Bloch oscillations manifest as a periodic repopulation among these states, or equivalently a periodic change in the system's instantaneous energy. Our predictions are confirmed by considering two different models: a driven harmonic oscillator and a Landau-Zener grid model. To strengthen the link between our energy Bloch oscillations and the original spatial Bloch oscillations we add a random disorder that breaks the translational invariance of the spectrum. This verifies that the oscillating evolution breaks down and instead turns into a diffusive spreading. Finally, we consider a trapped ion setup and demonstrate how the mechanism can be utilized to prepare motional cat state of the ion.

With the objective of simulating the physical behaviour of electrons moving in a dynamical background, we study a cold atomic Bose-Fermi mixture in an optical lattice potential felt only by the bosons. The bosons, assumed to be in the deep superfluid regime, inherit the periodicity of the optical lattice and subsequently act as a dynamical potential for the polarized fermions. Due to the atom-phonon interaction between the fermions and the condensate, the coupled system displays a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition from a Luttinger liquid to a Peierls phase. For sufficiently strong Bose-Fermi interaction, however, the Peierls phase becomes unstable and is succeeded by either a collapsed or a separated phase. We find that the main role of the optical lattice amounts to stabilizing the Peierls phase. Furthermore, the presence of a confining harmonic trap leads to a rich physical behaviour beyond what is observed for either bosons or fermions separately trapped. In particular, for an attractive Bose-Fermi interaction, the insulating phase may develop a fermionic wedding-cake like configuration reflecting the dynamical nature of the underlying lattice potential. For repulsive interaction, on the other hand, we conclude that the trap destabilizes the Peierls phase and the two species separate. 

We investigate a one-dimensional Rabi-Hubbard type of model, arranged such that a quantum dot is sandwiched between every cavity. The role of the quantum dot is twofold, to transmit photons between neighboring cavities and simultaneously act as an effective photon nonlinearity. We consider three-level quantum dots in the A configuration, where the left and right leg couple exclusively to the left or right cavity. This noncommuting interaction leads to two highly entangled incompressible phases, separated by a second-order quantum phase transition; the degrees of freedom of the quantum dots can be viewed as a dynamical lattice for the photons which spontaneously breaks Z(2) symmetry due to a bosonic Peierls instability, leading to a phase with dimerized order. Additionally, we find a normal insulating phase and a superfluid phase that acts as a quantum many-body superradiant phase. In the superradiant phase, a Z(2) symmetry is broken and the phase transition falls within the universality class of the transverse-field Ising model. Finally, we show that the model can be interpreted as a Z(2) lattice gauge theory in the absence of a dipolar field on the lower qutrit levels.