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We investigate the interplay of voltage-driven excitations and electron-electron interactions in a pair of counterpropagating helical channels capacitively coupled to a time-dependent gate. By focusing on the non-equilibrium spectral properties of the system, we show how the spectral function is modified by external drives with different time profile in presence of Coulomb interactions. In particular, we focus on a Lorentzian drive and a square single pulse. In presence of strong enough electron-electron interactions, we find that both drives can result in minimal excitations, i.e. characterized by an excess spectral function with a definite sign. This is in contrast with what happens in the non-interacting case, where only properly quantized Lorentzian pulses are able to produce minimal excitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]