We construct an anomalous Floquet topological phase on a negatively curved hyperbolic lattice. The model is a tight-binding Hamiltonian with a periodically repeated four-color edge-hopping sequence and a sublattice-staggered onsite potential step. The topological regime is reached near the limit in which a single hopping step transfers amplitude completely across an active edge, while the trivial regime is reached near the point where two full hops occur along an active edge during a single hopping step, returning the amplitude to its starting site. In finite open patches, the topological regime is characterized by bulk quasienergy gaps at $0$ and $π$ that are populated by in-gap states, in contrast to a trivial regime where these gaps remain empty. Using compact periodic lattices, we map the bulk $0$ and $π$ quasienergy gaps and identify the gapped regions connected to the trivial and anomalous open-boundary spectra. We diagnose the in-gap states as chiral boundary modes by their real-space dynamics. Finally, we introduce a small-boundary spectral-flow diagnostic based on punctured periodic hyperbolic lattices, which avoids the ambiguity associated with the extensive outer boundary of finite hyperbolic patches. This puncture-based diagnostic should be useful for studying other topological hyperbolic systems.
We construct an anomalous Floquet topological phase on a negatively curved hyperbolic lattice. The model is a tight-binding Hamiltonian with a periodically repeated four-color edge-hopping sequence and a sublattice-staggered onsite potential step. The topological regime is reached near the limit in which a single hopping step transfers amplitude completely across an active edge, while the trivial regime is reached near the point where two full hops occur along an active edge during a single hopping step, returning the amplitude to its starting site. In finite open patches, the topological regime is characterized by bulk quasienergy gaps at 0 and π that are populated by in-gap states, in contrast to a trivial regime where these gaps remain empty. Using compact periodic lattices, we map the bulk 0 and π quasienergy gaps and identify the gapped regions connected to the trivial and anomalous open-boundary spectra. We diagnose the in-gap states as chiral boundary modes by their real-space dynamics. Finally, we introduce a small-boundary spectral-flow diagnostic based on punctured periodic hyperbolic lattices, which avoids the ambiguity associated with the extensive outer boundary of finite hyperbolic patches. This puncture-based diagnostic should be useful for studying other topological hyperbolic systems.
Recently, anomalous Floquet topological phases without static counterparts have been observed in different systems, where periodically driven models are realized to support a winding number of 1 and a pair of edge modes in each quasienergy gap. Here, we focus on cold atomic gases in optical lattices and propose a driving scheme that breaks rotation symmetry but maintains inversion symmetry of the instantaneous Hamiltonian, and discover a type of anomalous Floquet topological phase with a winding number larger than 1. By analyzing the condition of band touching under the constraint of symmetries, we map out the phase diagram exactly by varying the driving parameters and discuss the quasienergy spectra of typical topological phases, which can present multiple pairs of edge modes within a single gap. Finally, we suggest to characterize the topology of such phases by detecting the band inversion surfaces via quench dynamics.
Topology has emerged as a central concept for classifying phases of matter. The situation is especially rich in periodically driven systems, where anomalous Floquet topological phases break the usual bulk-boundary correspondence between Chern number and edges modes of two-dimensional systems. These phases were so far realized by periodic modulation of the tunneling elements at frequencies near-resonant with respect to the system's bandwidth, a regime where Floquet heating plays a significant role in interacting systems. Here we show that such anomalous Floquet topological phases can also be realized by means of an adiabatic protocol, where the system is always in the instantaneous ground state of the cyclic path in parameter space, like in a Thouless charge pump. We experimentally realize such a state using ultracold atoms in a hexagonal lattice where we adiabatically modulate the lattice geometry, including the sublattice offset. To infer the topology, we use the micromotion area in real-space, which was recently identified as a proxy for the winding number. This way of realizing anomalous phases avoids resonant Floquet heating and imperfect loading into the target state. We demonstrate the robustness of the adiabatic construction by observing the anomalous phase even in the presence of mean-field interactions of magnitude comparable to all other energy scales. These findings are promising for engineering novel topological states in a more robust way.
Symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases in insulators and superconductors are known for their robust edge modes, linked to bulk invariants through the bulk-boundary correspondence. While this principle traditionally applies to gapped phases, recent advances have extended it to gapless systems, where topological edge-states persist even in the absence of a bulk gap. We extend this framework to periodically driven chains with chiral symmetry, revealing the existence of topological edge zero and $\ensuremath{\pi}$ modes despite the lack of bulk gaps in the quasienergy spectrum. By examining the half-period decomposition of chiral evolutions, we construct topological invariants that circumvent the need to define the Floquet Hamiltonian, making them more suitable for generalization to the gapless regime. We provide explicit examples, including generalizations of the Kitaev chain and related spin models, where localized $\ensuremath{\pi}$ modes emerge even when the bulk is gapless at the same quasienergy as the edge modes. We numerically study the effect of interactions, which give a finite lifetime to the edge modes in the thermodynamic limit with the decay rate consistent with Fermi's golden rule.
This thesis reports on the realization of Floquet topological systems with ultracold atoms in an optical honeycomb lattice. Using periodically driven quantum systems, topological phases of matter can be simulated by an effective, static Hamiltonian related to the time-evolution at integer multiples of the driving period, which is known as Floquet engineering. However, periodic driving can also give rise to genuinely time-dependent settings without static counterparts. One example is the anomalous Floquet phase in two dimensions, in which all bulk bands have a Chern number of zero but nevertheless robust chiral edge modes appear, which would be precluded by the bulk-edge correspondence in a static system. In an optical honeycomb lattice, anomalous Floquet systems can be created by continuous, periodic modulation of the laser intensities. This driving scheme results in different topological regimes, three of which are investigated, including the anomalous Floquet phase and a Haldane-like phase. Periodically driven systems feature periodic quasienergies and can be characterized in terms of winding numbers, which count the number of chiral edge modes in each quasienergy gap. By interferometric measurements of the quasienergy gaps between the first two Floquet bands, the topological phase transitions, emerging as gap closings, are located. For periodically driven systems, a modified bulk-edge correspondence can be formulated. In particular, the change of the winding number at a phase transition is related to the sign change of the local Berry curvature. The Berry curvature at the gap closing points is probed by Hall deflection measurements to obtain the winding numbers in each of the topological regimes, revealing the existence of chiral edge modes also in a setting with smooth boundaries as used in the experiments. The measured quasienergy gaps and transverse deflections are quantitatively well described by a numerical calculation of the Floquet bandstructure that includes coupling to higher bands during the driving period. To derive the spectrum of the modulated lattice in a geometry with edges, a tight-binding description of the system is discussed. Circular phase modulation of the honeycomb lattice can also give rise to an anomalous Floquet system when inversion symmetry is broken. The topological phase diagrams and the experimental feasibility are compared for both modulation schemes. Due to the vanishing Chern numbers, the bulk states in the anomalous Floquet regime can be fully localized by a disorder potential. This could prevent heating in interacting, periodically driven systems, resulting in a many-body localized bulk coexisting with thermalizing edge states. The experimental realization of disorder and strong interactions, as well as independent probes of the edge states are investigated. Bloch band geometry can be extended to multiband systems, using Wilson lines. The possible symmetry protection of their eigenvalues is discussed, along with measurements in the optical honeycomb lattice. Moreover, the onset of heating in weakly-interacting, periodically driven systems, triggered by parametric instabilities, is studied experimentally in a one-dimensional lattice.
Novel topological properties that arose in the periodically driven system are unique, in which there are two kinds of quasienergy gaps, the zero quasienergy gap and the π quasienergy gap. The corresponding edge modes would traverse either the zero quasienergy gap or the π quasienergy gap, or traverse both two quasienergy gaps. And the characterization of these two kinds of edge modes might not be the same. However, in this paper, we find that both the zero edge modes and the π edge modes in the Floquet Chern insulators can be characterized by the same topological invariant, where the corresponding Dirac mass term is periodically kicked. Particularly, we take the periodically kicked Qi-Wu-Zhang model as an illustrative example. In this model, the topology is characterized by the Floquet Chern number CF, and there are six different topological phases in total, denoted as CF={−10,−2,−1π,1π,2,10}. Furthermore, we find that the Floquet operator associated with the periodically kicked Qi-Wu-Zhang model reduces to a Dirac Hamiltonian in the low-energy limit. Then, the phase diagram is uncovered by examining the topology of this Dirac Hamiltonian. Additionally, we explore the orders of topological phase transitions in the context of Floquet stationary states by analyzing the von Neumann entropy of these states. Our work provides further insights into the topological phases in periodically driven systems.
Tessellations of the hyperbolic spaces by regular polygons support discrete quantum and classical models with unique spectral and topological characteristics. Resolving the true bulk spectra and the thermodynamic response functions of these models requires converging periodic boundary conditions and our Letter delivers a practical and rigorous solution for this open problem on generic {p,q}-tessellations. This enables us to identify the true spectral gaps of bulk Hamiltonians and construct all but one topological models that deliver the topological gaps predicted by the K theory of the lattices. We demonstrate the emergence of the expected topological spectral flows whenever two such bulk models are deformed into each other and prove the emergence of topological channels whenever a soft physical interface is created between different topological classes of Hamiltonians.