Floquet topological insulators

Jérôme Cayssol (1, 2) , Balázs Dóra (3, 4) , Ferenc Simon (3) , Roderich Moessner (2)

1 LOMA - Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d'Aquitaine
2 MPI-PKS - Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems
3 Department of Physics [Budapest]
4 BME-MTA Exotic Quantum Phases Research Group

Topological insulators represent unique phases of matter with insulating bulk and conducting edge or surface states, immune to small perturbations such as backscattering due to disorder. This stems from their peculiar band structure, which provides topological protections. While conventional tools (pressure, doping etc.) to modify the band structure are available, time periodic perturbations can provide tunability by adding time as an extra dimension enhanced to the problem. In this short review, we outline the recent research on topological insulators in non equilibrium situations. Firstly, we introduce briefly the Floquet formalism that allows to describe steady states of the electronic system with an effective time-independent Hamiltonian. Secondly, we summarize recent theoretical work on how light irradiation drives semi-metallic graphene or a trivial semiconducting system into a topological phase. Finally, we show how photons can be used to probe topological edge or surface states.

Mots clés: topological insulators; spin-Hall effect; Floquet theory

Domaines: Autre [cond-mat.other]

Jérôme Cayssol, Balázs Dóra, Ferenc Simon, Roderich Moessner. Floquet topological insulators. physica status solidi (RRL) - Rapid Research Letters, 2013, 7 (1-2), pp.101-108. ⟨10.1002/pssr.201206451⟩. ⟨hal-00820826⟩