Strongly Disordered Floquet Topological Systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates the properties of strongly disordered Floquet topological systems in two dimensions, establishing a bulk-edge correspondence and linking indices to physical observables like magnetization and pumping.

Contribution

It generalizes the bulk-edge correspondence to systems with a mobility gap and introduces new indices that connect to physical measurements, extending previous spectral gap results.

Findings

Established bulk-edge correspondence for mobility gaps.

Defined new indices matching physical observables.

Reduced general systems to completely localized ones.

Abstract

We study the strong disorder regime of Floquet topological systems in dimension two, that describe independent electrons on a lattice subject to a periodic driving. In the spectrum of the Floquet propagator we assume the existence of an interval in which all states are localized--a mobility gap. First we generalize the relative construction from spectral to mobility gap, define a bulk index for an infinite sample and an edge index for the half-infinite one and prove the bulk-edge correspondence. Second, we consider completely localized systems where the mobility gap is the whole circle, and define alternative bulk and edge indices that circumvent the relative construction and match with quantized magnetization and pumping observables from the physics literature. Finally, we show that any system with a mobility gap can be reduced to a completely localized one. All the indices defined throughout are equal.