Multiterminal Conductance of a Floquet Topological Insulator

L. E. FOA TORRES; P. PEREZ-PISKUNOW; C. A. BALSEIRO; GONZALO USAJ

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2014 vol. 113 p. 266801 - 266801

0031-9007

We report on simulations of the dc conductance and quantum Hall response of a Floquet topological insulator using Floquet scattering theory. Our results reveal that laser-induced edge states lead to quantum Hall plateaus once imperfect matching with the non-illuminated leads is lessened. The magnitude of the Hall plateaus, however, is not directly related to the number and chirality of all the edge states at a given energy, as usual. Instead, the plateaus are dominated by those edge states adding to the time-averaged density of states. Therefore, the dc quantum Hall conductance of a Floquet topological insulator is not directly linked to topological invariants of the full Floquet bands.