Observation of topological transport quantization by dissipation in fast Thouless pumps

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that topological quantized transport in Thouless pumps can be achieved at high driving frequencies through tailored dissipation, overcoming the traditional slow-driving limitation.

Contribution

It introduces non-Hermitian Floquet engineering to enable topological transport quantization at fast driving frequencies, verified experimentally.

Findings

Quantized transport persists at high frequencies with tailored dissipation.

Non-Hermitian Floquet engineering suppresses non-adiabatic transitions.

Experimental confirmation in plasmonic waveguide arrays.

Abstract

Quantized dynamics is essential for natural processes and technological applications alike. The work of Thouless on quantized particle transport in slowly varying potentials (Thouless pumping) has played a key role in understanding that such quantization may be caused not only by discrete eigenvalues of a quantum system, but also by invariants associated with the nontrivial topology of the Hamiltonian parameter space. Since its discovery, quantized Thouless pumping has been believed to be restricted to the limit of slow driving, a fundamental obstacle for experimental applications. Here, we introduce non-Hermitian Floquet engineering as a new concept to overcome this problem. We predict that a topological band structure and associated quantized transport can be restored at driving frequencies as large as the system's band gap. The underlying mechanism is suppression of non-adiabatic transitions by tailored, time-periodic dissipation. We confirm the theoretical predictions by experiments on topological transport quantization in plasmonic waveguide arrays.