Interacting Floquet topological phases in three dimensions

TL;DR

This paper classifies three-dimensional interacting Floquet topological phases with anomalous boundary transport, using a framework based on local unitary operators and exchange drives, establishing a bulk-boundary correspondence.

Contribution

It introduces a classification scheme for 3D Floquet topological phases without symmetry, based on boundary equivalence classes and reciprocal lattice vectors.

Findings

Boundary behavior characterized by reciprocal lattice vectors

Complete classification of 3D bulk phases

Bulk-boundary correspondence established through exchange drives

Abstract

In two dimensions, interacting Floquet topological phases may arise even in the absence of any protecting symmetry, exhibiting chiral edge transport that is robust to local perturbations. We explore a similar class of Floquet topological phases in three dimensions, with translational invariance but no other symmetry, which also exhibit anomalous transport at a boundary surface. By studying the space of local 2D unitary operators, we show that the boundary behavior of such phases falls into equivalence classes, each characterized by an infinite set of reciprocal lattice vectors. In turn, this provides a classification of the 3D bulk, which we argue is complete. We demonstrate that such phases may be generated by exactly-solvable `exchange drives' in the bulk. In the process, we show that the edge behavior of a general exchange drive in two or three dimensions can be deduced from the geometric properties of its action in the bulk, a form of bulk-boundary correspondence.