Topological phase transition in commensurate multi-frequency Floquet Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model

TL;DR

This paper explores how dual-frequency periodic driving in a Floquet Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model can induce novel topological phases and transitions, with practical methods for experimental control and detailed topological phase diagrams.

Contribution

It introduces a new multi-frequency driving protocol for the SSH model, revealing exotic topological phases and a practical approach to induce phase transitions.

Findings

Multiple driving frequencies create new topological phases.

Amplitude modulation enables sweeping through phase transitions.

Real space Chern marker effectively maps topological diagrams.

Abstract

Recently, Floquet systems have attracted a great deal of interest as they offer unprecedented ability to engineer topological states through the tuning of an external time-periodic drive. Consequentially, seeking new driving protocols that allow for more exotic topological phases and transitions becomes imperative for the Floquet engineer. In this paper, we study the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model driven by two time-dependent periodic sources with commensurate frequencies and an amplitude modulation. Imposing more than one driving frequency allows us to realize even more exotic topological phases resulting from new couplings appearing in the Fourier space representation. Moreover, we find an experimentally practical method for sweeping the system through a topological phase transition by varying the amplitude mixture of the commensurate sources. We employ the local Chern marker, a real space representation of the Chern number, to simulate topological phase diagrams of the two-drive Floquet Hamiltonian in a variety of driving cases.