Topological Floquet-Thouless energy pump

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel topological energy pump driven periodically, where energy, not charge, is quantized and robust against disorder and interactions, with potential experimental implementations.

Contribution

It reveals a new topological phase where energy is quantized in adiabatic Floquet systems, characterized by a winding number of micromotion.

Findings

The energy pump is topologically quantized and robust against disorder.

Numerical simulations show breakdown at high disorder or interaction levels.

Experimental protocols are proposed for observing this energy pump.

Abstract

We explore adiabatic pumping in the presence of periodic drive, finding a new phase in which the topologically quantized pumped quantity is energy rather than charge. The topological invariant is given by the winding number of the micromotion with respect to time within each cycle, momentum, and adiabatic tuning parameter. We show numerically that this pump is highly robust against both disorder and interactions, breaking down at large values of either in a manner identical to the Thouless charge pump. Finally, we suggest experimental protocols for measuring this phenomenon.