Floquet engineering is an important way to manipulate the electronic states of condensed matter physics. Recently, the discovery of the magnetic topological insulator MnBi2Te4 and its family provided a valuable platform to study magnetic topological phenomena, such as, the quantum anomalous Hall effect, the axion insulator state and the topological magnetoelectric effect. In this work, based on the effective model and first-principles calculations in combination with the Floquet theory, we reveal that the circularly polarized light (CPL) induces the sign reversal of the Chern number of odd-septuple-layer (SL) MnBi2Te4 thin films. In contrast, the CPL drives the axion insulator state into the quantum anomalous Hall state in even-SL MnBi2Te4 thin films. More interestingly, if the topmost van der Waals gap between the surface layer and the below bulk in MnBi2Te4 films is slightly expanded, a high Chern number ∣C∣=2 can be realized under the CPL. Our work demonstrates that the light can induce rich magnetic topological phases in MnBi2Te4 films, which might have potential applications in optoelectronic devices.
@article{arxiv.2210.12457,
title = {Floquet engineering of magnetic topological insulator MnBi$_2$Te$_4$ films},
author = {Tongshuai Zhu and Huaiqiang Wang and Haijun Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.12457},
year = {2023}
}