Simulating Floquet topological phases in static systems
Abstract
We show that scattering from the boundary of static, higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs) can be used to simulate the behavior of (time-periodic) Floquet topological insulators. We consider D-dimensional HOTIs with gapless corner states which are weakly probed by external waves in a scattering setup. We find that the unitary reflection matrix describing back-scattering from the boundary of the HOTI is topologically equivalent to a (D-1)-dimensional nontrivial Floquet operator. To characterize the topology of the reflection matrix, we introduce the concept of `nested' scattering matrices. Our results provide a route to engineer topological Floquet systems in the lab without the need for external driving. As benefit, the topological system does not to suffer from decoherence and heating.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2001.08217,
title = {Simulating Floquet topological phases in static systems},
author = {Selma Franca and Fabian Hassler and Ion Cosma Fulga},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.08217},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
31 pages, 8 figures. Updated the paper based on the referee reports at https://scipost.org/submissions/2001.08217/