Floquet engineering the Hofstadter butterfly in the square lattice and its effective Hamiltonian

TL;DR

This paper uses Floquet theory to explore how circular and linear polarized light modify the Hofstadter butterfly in a square lattice, revealing symmetry breaking, Landau level effects, and changes in topological properties.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical framework for controlling the Hofstadter butterfly and its topological features using laser-induced Floquet engineering.

Findings

Circularly polarized light breaks particle-hole and mirror symmetries.

Linearly polarized light deforms the butterfly by breaking rotational symmetry.

Strong circularly polarized light alters the Chern number of the lowest band.

Abstract

In this paper, we use Floquet theory to theoretically study the effect of monochromatic circularly and linearly polarized light on the Hofstadter butterfly in the square lattice, which is induced by uniform perpendicular magnetic field. In the absence of laser, the butterfly has a fractal, self-similar structure particle-hole symmetry and reflection symmetry about magnetic flux $\phi = 1/2$. These symmetries are preserved by the sub-lattice and the time-reversal symmetry, respectively. As the system is exposed to circularly polarized light, the original Hofsatdter butterfly in equilibrium is deformed by breaking both the particle-hole symmetry and the mirror symmetry, while the inversion symmetry about energy $E=0$ and magnetic flux $\phi=1/2$ is preserved. Our study show that, the circularly polarized light break both the sub-lattice symmetry and the time-reversal symmetry. The inversion symmetry is preserved because the Hamiltonian at magnetic flux $\phi$ and $1-\phi$ is connected through the sub-lattice transformation. Focusing on the small flux region, we study the Landau level and the influence of circularly polarized light on the Landau level. On the contrary, the linearly polarized light deforms the original Hofstadter butterfly by breaking the rotational symmetry while preserving sub-lattice and the time-reversal symmetry. Further, we study the influence of the periodic drive on the Chern number of the lowest band in middle Floquet copy within the off-resonance regime. We found strong circularly polarized light will change the Chern number. For linearly polarized light, the Chern number will not change and the values stay independent of laser polarization direction. Our work highlights the generic features expected for the periodically driven Hofstadter problem on square lattice and provide the strategy to engineering the Hofstadter butterfly with laser.