Physical Review X (Oct 2016)

Classification of Interacting Topological Floquet Phases in One Dimension

  • Andrew C. Potter,
  • Takahiro Morimoto,
  • Ashvin Vishwanath

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.6.041001
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6, no. 4
p. 041001

Abstract

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Periodic driving of a quantum system can enable new topological phases with no analog in static systems. In this paper, we systematically classify one-dimensional topological and symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases in interacting fermionic and bosonic quantum systems subject to periodic driving, which we dub Floquet SPTs (FSPTs). For physical realizations of interacting FSPTs, many-body localization by disorder is a crucial ingredient, required to obtain a stable phase that does not catastrophically heat to infinite temperature. We demonstrate that 1D bosonic and fermionic FSPT phases are classified by the same criteria as equilibrium phases but with an enlarged symmetry group G[over ˜], which now includes discrete time translation symmetry associated with the Floquet evolution. In particular, 1D bosonic FSPTs are classified by projective representations of the enlarged symmetry group H^{2}(G[over ˜],U(1)). We construct explicit lattice models for a variety of systems and then formalize the classification to demonstrate the completeness of this construction. We advocate that a prototypical Z_{2} bosonic FSPT may be realized by very simple Hamiltonians of the type currently available in existing cold atoms and trapped ion experiments.