Enhancement of local pairing correlations in periodically driven Mott insulators

We investigate a model for a Mott insulator in the presence of a time-periodic modulated interaction and a coupling to a thermal reservoir. The combination of drive and dissipation leads to nonequilibrium steady states with a large number of doublon excitations, well above the maximum thermal-equilibrium value. We interpret this effect as an enhancement of local pairing correlations, providing analytical arguments based on a Floquet Hamiltonian. Remarkably, this Hamiltonian shows a tendency to develop long-range staggered superconducting correlations. This suggests the possibility of realizing the elusive η-pairing phase in driven-dissipative Mott Insulators.