Unconventional quantum Hall effect in Floquet topological insulators
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Computational Physics and Materials Science (CPMS)Material Science and Engineering Program
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Date
2016-07-27Online Publication Date
2016-07-27Print Publication Date
2016-09-28Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/622491
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
We study an unconventional quantum Hall effect for the surface states of ultrathin Floquet topological insulators in a perpendicular magnetic field. The resulting band structure is modified by photon dressing and the topological property is governed by the low-energy dynamics of a single surface. An exchange of symmetric and antisymmetric surface states occurs by reversing the lights polarization. We find a novel quantum Hall state in which the zeroth Landau level undergoes a phase transition from a trivial insulator state, with Hall conductivity αyx = 0 at zero Fermi energy, to a Hall insulator state with αyx = e2/2h. These findings open new possibilities for experimentally realizing nontrivial quantum states and unusual quantum Hall plateaus at (±1/2,±3/2,±5/2, ...)e2/h. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK.Citation
Tahir M, Vasilopoulos P, Schwingenschlögl U (2016) Unconventional quantum Hall effect in Floquet topological insulators. Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 28: 385302. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0953-8984/28/38/385302.Sponsors
This work was supported by the Canadian NSERC Grant No. OGP0121756 (MT, PV). The research reported in this publication was supported by funding from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) (US).Publisher
IOP Publishingae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1088/0953-8984/28/38/385302