The time evolution of a system with a time-dependent non-Hermitian Hamiltonian is in general unstable with exponential growth or decay. A periodic driving field may stabilize the dynamics because the eigenphases of the associated Floquet operator may become all real. This possibility can emerge for a continuous range of system parameters with subtle domain boundaries. It is further shown that the issue of stability of a driven non-Hermitian Rabi model can be mapped onto the band structure problem of a class of lattice Hamiltonians. As a straightforward application, we show how to use the stability of driven non-Hermitian two-level systems (0 dimension in space) to simulate a spectrum analogous to Hofstadter's butterfly that has played a paradigmatic role in quantum Hall physics. The simulation of the band structure of non-Hermitian superlattice potentials with parity–time reversal symmetry is also briefly discussed.

• Received 29 January 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.91.042135