In this talk I will present two recent studies in which periodic driving was utilized to control many-body systems. In the first project I describe how two-frequency driving of neutral cold atom systems can be used to create a synthetic gauge field. In the second project I will discuss the dynamics of high-Tc superconductors in pump-probe experiments. In a recent experimental effort, it was shown that superconductivity can be stabilized via light pulses coupling to phononic modes of the system. Here, I present a possible mechanism for this result and also discuss how the phase fluctuations in such systems can be controlled.
