Disentangling signatures of Floquet topological systems

Kaixiang Su, Po-Wei Lo, Michael J. Lawler

Siyuan Cheng, Rui Xie, Xiaosen Yang +2 more

Xin Shen, Bing Lu, Yan-Qing Zhu

Periodically driven quantum systems, known as Floquet systems, provide a versatile platform for engineering novel topological phases absent in static settings. However, dynamically characterizing these non-equilibrium topological invariants remains a challenge. Here, we develop a Floquet perturbation theory in the extended Hilbert space to analytically describe the center-of-mass (CoM) dynamics of a wave packet. When applied to the driven Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, our theory reveals that the CoM exhibits multi-frequency Zitterbewegung oscillations, whose spectral composition and phase are directly tied to the system's Floquet band structure. Crucially, we find that band inversions at topological phase transitions imprint distinct signatures in the CoM dynamics, including the emergence of low-frequency modes and phase shifts of the oscillatory trajectory. These dynamical signatures offer a practical protocol for detecting Floquet topological invariants, which we demonstrate for both high-frequency and strongly driven regimes. Our work establishes CoM dynamics as a simple and experimentally accessible probe for exploring topological phase transitions in Floquet systems.

Jacob Shapiro, Clément Tauber

Szabolcs Vajna, B. Horovitz

Longwen Zhou, Qianqian Du

Dynamical quantum phase transitions (DQPTs) are characterized by nonanalytic behaviors of physical observables as functions of time. When a system is subject to time-periodic modulations, the nonanalytic signatures of its observables could recur periodically in time, leading to the phenomena of Floquet DQPTs. In this work, we systematically explore Floquet DQPTs in a class of periodically quenched one-dimensional system with chiral symmetry. By tuning the strength of quench, we find multiple Floquet DQPTs within a single driving period, with more DQPTs being observed when the system is initialized in Floquet states with larger topological invariants. Each Floquet DQPT is further accompanied by the quantized jump of a dynamical topological order parameter, whose values remain quantized in time if the underlying Floquet system is prepared in a gapped topological phase. The theory is demonstrated in a piecewise quenched lattice model, which possesses rich Floquet topological phases and is readily realizable in quantum simulators like the nitrogen-vacancy center in diamonds. Our discoveries thus open a new perspective for the Floquet engineering of DQPTs and the dynamical detection of topological phase transitions in Floquet systems.