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Critical systems represent physical boundaries between different phases of matter and have been intensely studied for their universality and rich physics. Yet, with the rise of non-Hermitian studies, fundamental concepts underpinning critical systems - like band gaps and locality - are increasingly called into question. This work uncovers a new class of criticality where eigenenergies and eigenstates of non-Hermitian lattice systems jump discontinuously across a critical point in the thermodynamic limit, unlike established critical scenarios with spectrum remaining continuous across a transition. Such critical behavior, dubbed the “critical non-Hermitian skin effect”, arises whenever subsystems with dissimilar non-reciprocal accumulations are coupled, however weakly. This indicates, as elaborated with the generalized Brillouin zone approach, that the thermodynamic and zero-coupling limits are not exchangeable, and that even a large system can be qualitatively different from its thermodynamic limit. Examples with anomalous scaling behavior are presented as manifestations of the critical non-Hermitian skin effect in finite-size systems. More spectacularly, topological in-gap modes can even be induced by changing the system size. We provide an explicit proposal for detecting the critical non-Hermitian skin effect in an RLC circuit setup, which also directly carries over to established setups in non-Hermitian optics and mechanics., In non-Hermitian systems, fundamental concepts like bandgaps and locality cannot be applied as in Hermitian systems. Here, the authors introduce a class of non-Hermitian critical scenarios where the eigenstates and energies jump discontinuously across a critical point, with anomalous scaling properties

The non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) in non-Hermitian lattice systems depicts the exponential localization of eigenstates at system's boundaries. It has led to a number of counter-intuitive phenomena and challenged our understanding of bulk-boundary correspondence in topological systems. This work aims to investigate how the NHSE localization and topological localization of in-gap edge states compete with each other, with several representative static and periodically driven 1D models, whose topological properties are protected by different symmetries. The emerging insight is that at critical system parameters, even topologically protected edge states can be perfectly delocalized. In particular, it is discovered that this intriguing delocalization occurs if the real spectrum of the system's edge states falls on the same system's complex spectral loop obtained under the periodic boundary condition. We have also performed sample numerical simulation to show that such delocalized topological edge states can be safely reconstructed from time-evolving states. Possible applications of delocalized topological edge states are also briefly discussed., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, comments are welcome

Non-Hermiticity is expected to add far more physical features to the already rich Floquet topological phases of matter. Nevertheless, a systematic approach to characterize non-Hermitian Floquet topological matter is still lacking. In this work we introduce a dual scheme to characterize the topology of non-Hermitian Floquet systems in momentum space and in real space, using a piecewise quenched nonreciprocal Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model for our case studies. Under the periodic boundary condition, topological phases are characterized by a pair of experimentally accessible winding numbers that make jumps between integers and half-integers. Under the open boundary condition, a Floquet version of the so-called open boundary winding number is found to be integers and can predict the number of pairs of zero and $\pi$ Floquet edge modes coexisting with the non-Hermitian skin effect. Our results indicate that a dual characterization of non-Hermitian Floquet topological matter is necessary and also feasible because the formidable task of constructing the celebrated generalized Brillouin zone for non-Hermitian Floquet systems with multiple hopping length scales can be avoided. This work hence paves a way for further studies of non-Hermitian physics in non-equilibrium systems., Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, comments are welcome

Floquet higher order topological insulators (FHOTIs) are a novel topological phase that can occur in periodically driven lattices. An appropriate experimental platform to realize FHOTIs has not yet been identified. We introduce a periodically-driven bipartite (two-band) system that hosts FHOTI phases, and predict that this lattice can be realized in experimentally-realistic optical waveguide arrays, similar to those previously used to study anomalous Floquet insulators. The model exhibits interesting phase transitions from first-order to second-order topological matter by tuning a coupling strength parameter, without breaking lattice symmetry. In the FHOTI phase, the lattice hosts corner modes at eigenphase $0$ or $\pi$, which are robust against disorder in the individual couplings., Comment: 5+ pages for the main text, plus 7 pages for the Supplementary Materials, to be submitted to Phys. Rev. B

International audience; We demonstrate that a large class of one-dimensional quantum and classical exchange models can be described by the same type of graphs, namely Cayley graphs of the permutation group. Their well-studied spectral properties allow us to derive crucial information about those models of fundamental importance in both classical and quantum physics, and to completely characterize their algebraic structure. Notably, we prove that the spectral gap can be obtained in polynomial computational time, which has strong implications in the context of adiabatic quantum computing with quantum spin-chains. This quantity also characterizes the rate to stationarity of some important classical random processes such as interchange and exclusion processes. Reciprocally, we use results derived from the celebrated Bethe ansatz to obtain original mathematical results about these graphs in the unweighted case. We also discuss extensions of this unifying framework to other systems, such as asymmetric exclusion processes -- a paradigmatic model in non-equilibrium physics, or the more exotic non-Hermitian quantum systems.

We propose a realistic cold-atom quantum setting where topological localization induces nonreciprocal pumping. This is an intriguing non-Hermitian phenomenon that illustrates how topology, when assisted with atom loss, can act as a ``switch'' for the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE), rather than as a passive property that is modified by the NHSE. In particular, we present a lattice-shaking scenario to realize a two-dimensional cold-atom platform, where nonreciprocity is switched on only in the presence of both atom loss and topological localization due to time-reversal symmetry breaking. The resultant nonreciprocal pumping is manifested by asymmetric dynamical evolution, detectable by atomic populations along the system edges. Our setup may trigger possible applications in nonreciprocal atomtronics, where loss and topological mechanisms conspire to control atomic transport. Its quantum nature will also facilitate future studies on the interplay between non-Hermiticity and many-body physics.

Nonlinearity induced topological properties in nonlinear lattice systems are studied in both momentum space and real space. Experimentally realizable through the Kerr effect on photonic waveguide systems, our working model depicts on-site nonlinearity added to the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model plus a chiral-symmetry breaking term. Under the periodic-boundary condition, two of the nonlinear energy bands approach the energy bands of the chiral-symmetric SSH model as nonlinearity strength increases. Further, we account for a correction to the Zak phase and obtain a general expression for nonlinear Zak phases. For sufficiently strong nonlinearity, the sum of all nonlinear Zak phases (not the sum of all conventional Zak phases) is found to be quantized. In real space, it is discovered that there is a strong interplay between nonlinear solitons and the topologically protected edge states of the associated chiral-symmetric linear system. Nonlinearity can recover the degeneracy between two edge soliton states, albeit a chiral-symmetry breaking term. We also reveal the topological origin of in-gap solitons even when the associated linear system is in the topological trivial regime. These momentum-space and real-space results have clearly demonstrated new topological features induced by nonlinearity, indicating that topological physics in nonlinear lattice systems is far richer than previously thought.

Adiabatic quantum pumping in one-dimensional lattices is extended by adding a tilted potential to probe better topologically nontrivial bands. This extension leads to almost perfectly quantized pumping for an arbitrary initial state selected in a band of interest, including Bloch states. In this approach, the time variable offers not only a synthetic dimension as in the case of the Thouless pumping, but it assists also in the uniform sampling of all momenta due to the Bloch oscillations induced by the tilt. The quantized drift of Bloch oscillations is determined by a one-dimensional time integral of the Berry curvature, being effectively an integer multiple of the topological Chern number in the Thouless pumping. Our study offers a straightforward approach to yield quantized pumping, and it is useful for probing topological phase transitions., 13 pages, 12 figures

For topological characterization of non-Hermitian multiband systems, Majorana's stellar representation (MSR) is applied to 1D multiband models consisting of asymmetric nearest-neighbor hopping and imaginary on-site potentials. The number of edge states isolated from the continuous bulk bands in the complex energy plane is successfully linked with a topological invariant constructed from MSR. Specifically, the number of isolated edge states can be obtained from a winding number defined for the Majorana stars, which also allows for a geometric visualization of the topology related to the isolated edge modes. A remarkable success of our approach is that our winding number characterization remains valid even in the presence of exceptional points of the continuous bulk bands, where the Hamiltonian becomes non-diagonalizable and hence conventional topological invariants such as the Zak phase and the Chern number cannot be properly defined. Furthermore, cases with the so-called non-Hermitian skin effect are also studied, showing that the bulk-boundary correspondence between our defined winding numbers and isolated edge states can be restored. Of particular interest is a four-band example with an odd number of isolated edge states, where the Zak phase approach necessarily fails upon removing the skin effect, but our MSR-based characterization works equally well. For these reasons, our study is expected to be widely useful in topological studies of non-Hermitian multiband systems, regardless of the skin effect or the presence of the exceptional points in non-Hermitian systems., 14 pages, 15 figures

Majorana modes, typically arising at the edges of one-dimensional topological superconductors, are considered to be a promising candidate for encoding nonlocal qubits in fault-tolerant quantum computing. Here we exploit the two-dimensional geometry of Majorana corner modes in second-order topological superconductors to establish measurement-only quantum computation. It is shown that eight Majorana corner modes emerge when such systems are periodically driven, through which two nonlocal logical qubits and one nonlocal ancilla qubit can be constructed. Quantum gate operations can then be implemented by a designed series of parity measurements of topologically protected Majorana corner modes, accomplished via Mach-Zehnder type interference in the conductance between different corners of a second-order topological superconductor. Our theoretical proposal represents a scenario in which topologically protected single- and two-qubit gate operations can be carried out in a minimal setup, thus potentially establishing an efficient and low-cost building block for Majorana-based qubit architectures.

Periodically driven non-Hermitian systems can exhibit rich topological band structure and non-Hermitian skin effect, without analogs in their static or Hermitian counterparts. In this work we investigate the exceptional band-touching points in the Floquet quasi-energy bands, the topological characterization of such exceptions points and the Floquet non-Hermitian skin effect (FNHSE). Specifically, we exploit the simplicity of periodically quenched two-band systems in one dimension or two dimensions to analytically obtain the Floquet effective Hamiltonian as well as locations of the many exceptional points possessed by the Floquet bulk bands. Two different types of topological winding numbers are used to characterize the topological features. Bulk-edge correspondence (BBC) is naturally found to break down due to FNHSE, which can be drastically different among different bulk states. Remarkably, given the simple nature of our model systems, recovering the BBC is doable in practice only for certain parameter regime where a low-order truncation of the characteristic polynomial (which determines the Floquet band structure) becomes feasible. Furthermore, irrespective of which parameter regime we work with, we find a number of intriguing aspects of Floquet topological zero modes and $\pi$ modes. For example, under the open boundary condition zero edge modes and $\pi$ edge modes can individually coalesce and localize at two different boundaries. These anomalous edge states can also switch their accumulation boundaries when certain system parameter is tuned. These results indicate that non-Hermitian Floquet topological phases, though more challenging to understand than their Hermitian counterparts, can be extremely rich in the presence of FNHSE., Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures

Nonequilibrium Floquet topological phases due to periodic driving are known to exhibit rich and interesting features with no static analogs. Various known topological invariants usually proposed to characterize static topological systems often fail to fully characterize Floquet topological phases. This fact has motivated extensive studies of Floquet topological phases to better understand nonequilibrium topological phases and to explore their possible applications. Here we present a theoretically simple Floquet topological insulating system that may possess an arbitrary number of counter-propagating chiral edge states. Further investigation into our system reveals another related feature by tuning the same set of system parameters, namely, the emergence of almost flat (dispersionless) edge modes. In particular, we employ two-terminal conductance and dynamical winding numbers to characterize counter-propagating chiral edge states. We further demonstrate the robustness of such edge states against symmetry preserving disorder. Finally, we identify an emergent chiral symmetry at certain sub-regimes of the Brillouin zone that can explain the presence of almost flat edge modes. Our results have exposed more interesting possibilities in Floquet topological matter., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, one error corrected. To appear in Physical Review B

A topological measure characterizing symmetry-protected topological phases in one-dimensional open fermionic systems is proposed. It is built upon the kinematic approach to the geometric phase of mixed states and facilitates the extension of the notion of topological phases from zero-temperature to nonzero-temperature cases. In contrast to a previous finding that topological properties may not survive above a certain critical temperature, we find that topological properties of open systems, in the sense of the measure suggested here, can persist at any finite temperature and disappear only in the mathematical limit of infinite temperature. Our result is illustrated with two paradigmatic models of topological matter. The bulk topology at nonzero temperatures manifested as robust mixed edge state populations is examined via two figures of merit., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

In Thouless pump, the charge transport in a one-dimensional insulator over an adiabatic cycle is topologically quantized. For nonequilibrium initial states, however, interband coherence will induce a previously unknown contribution to Thouless pumping. Though not geometric in nature, this contribution is independent of the time scale of the pumping protocol. In this work, we perform a detailed analysis of our previous finding [Phys. Rev. B 91, 085420 (2015)] in an already available cold-atom setup. We show that initial states with interband coherence can be obtained via a quench of the system's Hamiltonian. Adiabatic pumping in the post-quench system are then examined both theoretically and numerically, in which the interband coherence is shown to play an important role and can hence be observed experimentally. By choosing adiabatic protocols with different switching-on speeds, we also show that the contribution of interband coherence to adiabatic pumping can be tuned. It is further proposed that the interband coherence induced correction to Thouless pumping may be useful in capturing a topological phase transition point. All our results have direct experimental interests., Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures

Magnetic-free optical non-reciprocal components, such as isolators and circulators, are highly desirable for on-chip optical signal processing1,2 and quantum networks3,4. However, their realization presents a fundamental difficulty due to the Lorentz reciprocity in most optical devices5. In this study, we propose and experimentally realize optical non-reciprocity with atoms embedded in a ring cavity at room temperature. Random thermal motion of atoms, in the presence of a unidirectional control field, creates susceptibility–momentum locking, and subsequently a new type of chiral quantum optical system. Furthermore, we demonstrate strong non-reciprocity based on this chiral quantum system in the regime of collectively strong atom–cavity coupling. Our scheme provides a new routine towards the realization of chiral quantum optics and chip-compatible, non-magnetic optical non-reciprocity. Optical non-reciprocity is experimentally realized with Rb atoms embedded in a ring cavity at room temperature. Random thermal motion of the atoms causes the probe-direction-dependent response assisted by a unidirectional control laser field.

Quasiparticle poisoning has remained one of the main challenges in the implementation of Majorana-based quantum computing. It inevitably occurs when the system hosting Majorana qubits is not completely isolated from its surrounding, thus considerably limiting its computational time. We propose the use of periodic driving to generate multiple MFs at each end of a single quantum wire, which naturally provides the necessary resources to implement active quantum error corrections with minimal space overhead. In particular, we present a stabilizer code protocol that can specifically detect and correct any single quasiparticle poisoning event. Such a protocol is implementable via existing proximitized semiconducting nanowire proposals, where all of its stabilizer operators can be measured from an appropriate Majorana parity dependent four-terminal conductance., 11 pages, 5 figures. First Revision. Some discussions and figures improved and a new figure added

Quantum degeneracy pressure (QDP) underscores the stability of matter and is arguably the most ubiquitous many-body effect. The associated Fermi surface (FS) has broad implications for physical phenomena, ranging from electromagnetic responses to entanglement entropy (EE) area law violations. Given recent fruitful studies in condensed-matter physics under effectively non-Hermitian descriptions, it becomes urgent to study how QDP and many-body interactions interplay with non-Hermitian effects. Through a prototypical critical 1D fermionic lattice with asymmetric gain/loss, a real space FS is shown to naturally emerge, in addition to any existing momentum space FS. We also carefully characterize such real space FS with the EE, via a renormalized temperature that encapsulates the interplay of thermal excitations and non-Hermiticity. Nearest neighbor repulsion is also found to induce competing charge density wave (CDW) that may erode the real space FS. The underlying physics surrounding criticality and localization is further analyzed with complex flux spectral flows. Our findings can be experimentally demonstrated with ultracold fermions in a suitably designed optical lattice., 16 pages, 14 figures

It is of theoretical and experimental interest to engineer topological phases with very large topological invariants via periodic driving. As advocated by this work, such Floquet engineering can be elegantly achieved by the particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique from the swarm intelligence family. With the recognition that conventional gradient-based optimization approaches are not suitable for directly optimizing topological invariants as integers, the highly effective PSO route yields new promises in the search for exotic topological phases, requiring limited physical resource. Our results are especially timely in view of two important insights from literature: low-frequency driving may be beneficial in creating large topological invariants, but an open-ended low-frequency driving often leads to drastic fluctuations in the obtained topological invariants. Indeed, using a simple continuously driven Harper model with three quasi-energy bands, we show that the Floquet-band Chern numbers can enjoy many-fold increase compared with that using a simple harmonic driving of the same period, without demanding more energy cost of the driving field. It is also found that the resulting Floquet insulator bands are still well-gapped, with the maximized topological invariants in agreement with physical observations from Thouless pumping. The emergence of many edge modes under the open boundary condition is also consistent with the bulk-edge correspondence. Our results are expected to be highly useful towards the optimization of many different types of topological invariants in Floquet topological matter., 10 pages, 9 figures

The adiabatic charge pumping of a non-equilibrium state of spinless fermions in a one-dimensional lattice is investigated, with an emphasis placed on its usefulness in revealing many-body interaction effects on interband coherence. For a non-interacting system, the pumped charge per adiabatic cycle depends not only on the topology of the occupied bands but also on the interband coherence in the initial state. This insight leads to an interesting opportunity for quantitatively observing how quantum coherence is affected by many-body interaction that is switched on for a varying duration prior to adiabatic pumping. In particular, interband coherence effects can be clearly observed by adjusting the switch-on rates with different adiabatic pumping protocols and by scanning the duration of many-body interaction prior to adiabatic pumping. The time dependence of single-particle interband coherence in the presence of many-body interaction can then be examined in detail. As a side but interesting result, for relatively weak interaction strength, it is found that the difference in the pumped charges between different pumping protocols vanishes if a coherence measure defined from the single-particle density matrix in the sublattice representation reaches its local minima. Our results hence provide an interesting means to quantitatively probe the dynamics of quantum coherence in the presence of many-body interaction (e.g., in a thermalization process)., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

Discrete time crystals (DTCs) are new phases of matter characterized by the presence of an observable evolving with $nT$ periodicity under a $T$-periodic Hamiltonian, where $n>1$ is an integer insensitive to small parameter variations. In particular, DTCs with $n=2$ have been extensively studied in periodically quenched and kicked spin systems in recent years. In this paper, we study the emergence of DTCs from the many-body quantum chaos perspective, using a rather simple model depicting a harmonically driven spin chain. We advocate to first employ a semiclassical approximation to arrive at a mean-field Hamiltonian and then identify the parameter regime at which DTCs exist, with standard tools borrowed from studies of classical chaos. Specifically, we seek symmetric-breaking solutions by examining the stable islands on the Poincare surface of section of the mean-field Hamiltonian. We then turn to the actual many-body quantum system, evaluate the stroboscopic dynamics of the total magnetization in the full quantum limit, and verify the existence of DTCs. Our effective and straightforward approach indicates that in general DTCs are one natural aspect of many-body quantum chaos with mixed classical phase space structure. Our approach can also be applied to general time-periodic systems, which is thus promising for finding DTCs with $n>2$ and opening possibilities for exploring DTCs properties beyond their time-translational breaking features., 19 pages, 7 figures

This work unveils how geometric features of two-band non-Hermitian Hamiltonians can classify the topology of their eigenstates and energy manifolds. Our approach generalizes the Bloch sphere visualization of Hermitian systems to a ``Bloch torus'' picture for non-Hermitian systems, by extending the origin of the Bloch sphere to a singularity ring (SR) in the vector space of the real pseudospin. The SR captures the structure of generic spectral exceptional degeneracies, which emerge only if the real pseudospin vector actually falls on the SR. Applicable to non-Hermitian systems that may or may not have exceptional degeneracies, this SR picture affords convenient visualization of various symmetry constraints and reduces their topological characterization to the classification of simple intersection or winding behavior, as detailed by our explicit study of chiral, sublattice, particle-hole, and conjugated particle-hole symmetries. In 1D, the winding number about the SR corresponds to the band vorticity measurable through the Berry phase. In 2D, more complicated winding behavior leads to a variety of phases that illustrates the richness of the interplay between SR topology and geometry beyond mere Chern number classification. Through a normalization procedure that puts generic two-band non-Hermitian Hamiltonians on equal footing, our SR approach also allows for vivid visualization of the non-Hermitian skin effect.

Optical nonreciprocity is of paramount importance to optical signal processing and one-way optical communication. Here, we theoretically and experimentally demonstrate nonreciprocal amplification based on four-level hot atoms by exploiting atomic Doppler shifts. Our approach is simple and easy to implement. In fair agreement with our theoretical modeling, forward power amplification of 26 dB and backward isolation of 30 dB are observed. Our results will open up a new avenue towards realistic devices based on nonreciprocal amplification.

$\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric quantum mechanics has been considered an important theoretical framework for understanding physical phenomena in $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric systems, with a number of $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry related applications. This line of research was made possible by the introduction of a time-independent metric operator to redefine the inner product of a Hilbert space. To treat the dynamics of generic non-Hermitian systems under equal footing, we advocate in this work the use of a time-dependent metric operator for the inner-product between time-evolving states. This treatment makes it possible to always interpret the dynamics of arbitrary (finite-dimensional) non-Hermitian systems in the framework of time-dependent $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric quantum mechanics, with unitary time evolution, real eigenvalues of an energy observable, and quantum measurement postulate all restored. Our work sheds new lights on generic non-Hermitian systems and spontaneous $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry breaking in particular. We also illustrate possible applications of our formulation with well-known examples in quantum thermodynamics., 9 pages, no figures

Second-order topological insulators (SOTI) exhibit protected gapless boundary states at their hinges or corners. In this paper, we propose a generic means to construct SOTIs in static and Floquet systems by coupling one-dimensional topological insulator wires along a second dimension through dimerized hopping amplitudes. The Hamiltonian of such SOTIs admits a Kronecker sum structure, making it possible for obtaining its features by analyzing two constituent one-dimensional lattice Hamiltonians defined separately in two orthogonal dimensions. The resulting topological corner states do not rely on any delicate spatial symmetries, but are solely protected by the chiral symmetry of the system. We further utilize our idea to construct Floquet SOTIs, whose number of topological corner states is arbitrarily tunable via changing the hopping amplitudes of the system. Finally, we propose to detect the topological invariants of static and Floquet SOTIs constructed following our approach in experiments by measuring the mean chiral displacements of wavepackets., 14 pages, 9 figures. Published version

The dynamics of a periodically driven system whose time evolution is governed by the Schr\"{o}dinger equation with non-Hermitian Hamiltonians can be perfectly stable. This finding was only obtained very recently and will be enhanced by many exact solutions discovered in this work. The main concern of this study is to investigate the adiabatic following dynamics in such non-Hermitian systems stabilized by periodic driving. We focus on the peculiar behaviour of stable cyclic (Floquet) states in the slow-driving limit. It is found that the stable cyclic states can either behave as intuitively expected by following instantaneous eigenstates, or exhibit piecewise adiabatic following by sudden-switching between instantaneous eigenstates. We aim to cover broad categories of non-Hermitian systems under a variety of different driving scenarios. We systematically analyse the sudden-switch behaviour by a universal route. That is, the sign change of the critical exponent in our asymptotic analysis of the solutions is always found to be the underlying mechanism to determine if the adiabatic following dynamics is trivial or piecewise. This work thus considerably extends our early study on the same topic [Gong and Wang, Phys. Rev. A 97, 052126 (2018)] and shall motivate more interests in non-Hermitian systems., Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, to be published on Phys. Rev. A

We propose the generation of entangled qubits by utilizing the properties of edge states appearing at one end of a periodically driven (Floquet) superconducting qubit chain. Such qubits are naturally protected by the system's topology and their manipulation is possible through adiabatic control of the system parameters. By utilizing a Y-junction geometry, we then develop a protocol to perform high-fidelity transfer of entangled qubits from one end to another end of a qubit chain. Our quantum state transfer protocol is found to be robust against disorder and imperfection in the system parameters. More importantly, our proposed protocol also performs remarkably well at larger system sizes due to nonvanishing gaps between the involved edge states and the bulk states, thus allowing us in principle to transfer entangled states over an arbitrarily large distance. This work hence indicates that Floquet topological edge states are not only resourceful for implementing quantum gate operations, but also useful for high-fidelity and long-distance transfer of entangled states along solid-state qubit chains., Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures

Dynamical quantum phase transitions (DQPTs) are manifested by time-domain nonanalytic behaviors of many-body systems.Introducing a quench is so far understood as a typical scenario to induce DQPTs.In this work, we discover a novel type of DQPTs, termed "Floquet DQPTs", as intrinsic features of systems with periodic time modulation.Floquet DQPTs occur within each period of continuous driving, without the need for any quenches.In particular, in a harmonically driven spin chain model, we find analytically the existence of Floquet DQPTs in and only in a parameter regime hosting a certain nontrivial Floquet topological phase. The Floquet DQPTs are further characterized by a dynamical topological invariant defined as the winding number of the Pancharatnam geometric phase versus quasimomentum.These findings are experimentally demonstrated with a single spin in diamond.This work thus opens a door for future studies of DQPTs in connection with topological matter.

One-dimensional atomic mixtures of fermions can effectively realize spin chains and thus constitute a clean and controllable platform to study quantum magnetism. Such strongly correlated quantum systems are also of sustained interest to quantum simulation and quantum computation due to their computational complexity. In this article, we exploit spectral graph theory to completely characterize the symmetry properties of one-dimensional fermionic mixtures in the strong interaction limit. We also develop a powerful method to obtain the so-called Tan contacts associated with certain symmetry classes. In particular, compared to brute force diagonalization that is already virtually impossible for a moderate number of fermions, our analysis enables us to make unprecedented efficient predictions about the energy gap of complex spin mixtures. Our theoretical results are not only of direct experimental interest, but also provide important guidance for the design of adiabatic control protocols in strongly correlated fermion mixtures., Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Physical Review Research

Among topological materials, nodal loop semimetals (NLSMs) are arguably the most topologically sophisticated, with their valence and conduction bands intersecting along arbitrarily intertwined nodes. But unlike the well-known topological band insulators with quantized edge conductivities, nodal loop materials possess topologically nontrivial Fermi surfaces, not bands. Hence an important question arises: Are there also directly measurable or even technologically useful physical properties characterizing nontrivial nodal loop topology? In this work, we provide an affirmative answer by showing, for the first time, that nodal linkages protect the higher harmonic generation (HHG) of electromagnetic signals. Specifically, nodal linkages enforce non-monotonicity in the intra-band semi-classical response of nodal materials, which will be robust against perturbations preserving the nodal topology. These nonlinearities distort incident radiation and produce higher frequency peaks in the teraHertz (THz) regime, as we quantitatively demonstrate for a few known nodal materials. Since THz sources are not yet ubiquitous, our new mechanism for HHG will greatly aid applications like material characterization and non-ionizing imaging of object interiors., Comment: 13 figures, 14 pages

Within the expanding field of non-Hermitian physics, non-Hermitian pumping has emerged as a key phenomenon, epitomized through the skin effect via extensive boundary mode accumulation modifying the conventional Bloch picture. Beyond redefining bulk-boundary correspondences, we show that non-Hermitian pumping induces an unprecedented type of spectral topology: it admits a classification in terms of graph topology, which is distinct from conventional topological classifications of the eigenstate or energy Riemann surface. Each topological class is characterized by a conformally invariant configuration of spectral branching singularities, with gap-preserving transitions giving rise to emergent band geometry and Berry curvature discontinuities physically manifested as anomalous response kinks. By placing all Hermitian and non-Hermitian lattice Hamiltonians on equal footing, our comprehensive framework also enables the first analytic construction of topological phase diagrams in the presence of multiple non-reciprocal coupling scales, as prototypically demonstrated for the extended non-Hermitian Chern and Kitaev models. Based on general algebraic geometry properties of the energy dispersion, our framework can be directly generalized to multiple bands, dimensions, and even interacting systems. Overall, it reveals the conspiracy of band representations, spectral topology, and complex geometry as it unfolds in directly measurable quantities., Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures

This work reports the functioning of a single atom energy-conversion device, operating either as a quantum engine or a refrigerator, coupled to a quantum load. The "working fluid" is comprised of two optical levels of a single ion, and the load is one vibrational mode of the same ion cooled down to the quantum regime. The energy scales of these two modes differ by 9 orders of magnitude. We realize cyclic energy transfers between the working fluid and the quantum load, either increasing or decreasing the population of the vibrational mode. This is achieved albeit the interaction between the load and the working fluid leads to a significant population redistribution and quantum correlations between them. The performance of the engine cycles as a function of several parameters is examined, and found to be in agreement with theory. We specifically look at the ergotropy of the load, which indicates the amount of energy stored in the load that can be extracted with a unitary process. We show that ergotropy rises with the number of engine cycles despite an increase in the entropy of the load. Our experiment represents the first fully quantum 4-stroke energy-conversion device operating with a generic coupling to a quantum load., 11 pages and 5 figures

Three-body correlations, which arise between spin-polarized electrons in the first excited Landau level, are believed to play a key role in the emergence of enigmatic non-Abelian fractional quantum Hall (FQH) effects. Inspired by recent advances in Floquet engineering, we investigate periodic driving of anisotropic two-body interactions as a route for controllably creating and tuning effective three-body interactions in the FQH regime. We develop an analytic formalism to describe this Floquet-FQH protocol, which is distinct from previous approaches that instead focus on bandstructure engineering via modulation of single-particle hopping terms. By systematically analyzing the resulting interactions using generalized pseudopotentials, we show that our Floquet-FQH approach leads to repulsive as well as attractive three-body interactions that are highly tunable and support a variety of non-Abelian multicomponent FQH states. Finally, we propose an implementation of the protocol in optically dressed ultracold polar molecules with modulated Rabi frequencies., 26 pages, 6 figures

Higher-order topological phases feature topologically protected boundary states in lower dimensions. Specifically, the zero-dimensional corner states are protected by the $d\mathrm{th}$-order topology of a $d$-dimension system. In this work, we propose to predict different configurations of corner states from winding numbers defined for one-dimensional edges of the system. We first demonstrate the winding number characterization with a generalized two-dimensional square lattice belonging to the BDI symmetry class. In addition to the second-order topological insulating phase, the system may also be a nodal point semimetal or a weak topological insulator with topologically protected one-dimensional edge states coexisting with the corner states at zero energy. A three-dimensional cubic lattice with richer configurations of corner states is also studied. We further discuss several experimental implementations of our models with photonic lattices or electric circuits.

Topological states of matter in non-Hermitian systems have attracted a lot of attention due to their intriguing dynamical and transport properties. In this study, we propose a periodically driven non-Hermitian lattice model in one-dimension, which features rich Floquet topological phases. The topological phase diagram of the model is derived analytically. Each of its non-Hermitian Floquet topological phases is characterized by a pair of integer winding numbers, counting the number of real 0- and \pi-quasienergy edge states at the boundaries of the lattice. Non-Hermiticity induced Floquet topological phases with unlimited winding numbers are found, which allow arbitrarily many real 0- and \pi-quasienergy edge states to appear in the complex quasienergy bulk gaps in a well-controlled manner. We further suggest to probe the topological winding numbers of the system by dynamically imaging the stroboscopic spin textures of its bulk states., Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, accepted version

The past few years have witnessed increased attention to the quest for Majorana-like excitations in the condensed matter community. As a promising candidate in this race, the one-dimensional chiral Majorana edge mode (CMEM) in topological insulator-superconductor heterostructures has gathered renewed interests after an experimental breakthrough [Q. L. He et al., Science 357, 294 (2017)]. In this work, we study computationally the quantum transport of topological insulator-superconductor hybrid devices subject to time-periodic modulation. We report half-integer quantized conductance plateaus at $\frac{1}{2}\frac{{e}^{2}}{h}$ and $\frac{3}{2}\frac{{e}^{2}}{h}$ upon applying the so-called sum rule in the theory of quantum transport in Floquet topological matter. In particular, in a photoinduced topological superconductor sandwiched between two Floquet Chern insulators, it is found that for each Floquet sideband, the CMEM admits equal probability for normal transmission and local Andreev reflection over a wide range of parameter regimes, yielding half-integer quantized plateaus that resist static and time-periodic disorder. While it is well-established that periodic driving fields can simultaneously create and manipulate multiple pairs of Majorana bound states, their detection scheme remains elusive, in part due to their being neutral excitations. Therefore the $\frac{3}{2}\frac{{e}^{2}}{h}$ plateau indicates the possibility to verify the generation of multiple pairs of photoinduced CMEMs via transport measurements. The robust and half-quantized conductance plateaus due to CMEMs are both fascinating and subtle because they only emerge after a summation over contributions from all Floquet sidebands. Our work may add insights into the transport properties of Floquet topological systems and stimulate further studies on the optical control of topological superconductivity.

Valence and conduction bands in nodal loop semimetals (NLSMs) touch along closed loops in momentum space. If such loops can proliferate and link intricately, NLSMs become exotic topological phases with unconventional topological characteristics and potentially peculiar transport properties. In conventional quantum materials or cold atom systems alike, such exotic phases necessarily require non-local hopping and are therefore intrinsically unrealistic. In this work, we show how this hurdle can be surmounted through an experimentally feasible periodic driving scheme. In particular, by tuning the period of a two-step periodic driving or some experimentally accessible parameters, we show how to generate arbitrarily many nodal loops that are linked with various levels of complexity. Furthermore, we propose to use both the Berry phase winding and the Alexander polynomial topological invariant to characterize the fascinating linkages among the nodal loops. This work thus presents a class of exotic Floquet topological phase that has hitherto not been proposed in any realistic setup., 18 pages and 11 figures in total. Finalized version

Adiabatic cyclic modulation of a one-dimensional periodic potential will result in quantized charge transport, which is termed the Thouless pump. In contrast to the original Thouless pump restricted by the topology of the energy band, here we experimentally observe a generalized Thouless pump that can be extensively and continuously controlled. The extraordinary features of the new pump originate from interband coherence in nonequilibrium initial states, and this fact indicates that a quantum superposition of different eigenstates individually undergoing quantum adiabatic following can also be an important ingredient unavailable in classical physics. The quantum simulation of this generalized Thouless pump in a two-band insulator is achieved by applying delicate control fields to a single spin in diamond. The experimental results demonstrate all principal characteristics of the generalized Thouless pump. Because the pumping in our system is most pronounced around a band-touching point, this work also suggests an alternative means to detect quantum or topological phase transitions., Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures

Floquet topological matter has emerged as one exciting platform to explore rich physics and game-changing applications of topological phases. As one remarkable and recently discovered feature of Floquet symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases, in principle a simple periodically driven system can host an arbitrary number of topological protected zero edge modes and pi edge modes, with Majorana zero modes and Majorana pi modes as examples protected by the particle-hole symmetry. This work advocates a new route to holonomic quantum computation by exploiting the co-existence of many Floquet SPT edge modes, all of which have trivial dynamical phases during a computation protocol. As compelling evidence supporting this ambitious goal, three pairs of Majorana edge modes, hosted by a periodically driven one-dimensional (1D) superconducting superlattice, are shown to suffice to encode two logical qubits, realize quantum gate operations, and execute two simple quantum algorithms through adiabatic lattice deformation. When compared with early studies on quantum computation based on Majorana zero modes of topological quantum wires, significant resource saving is now made possible by use of Floquet SPT phases. This paper is thus hoped to motivate a series of future studies on the potential of Floquet topological matter in quantum computation., Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures. To appear in PRB

Floquet states of periodically driven systems could exhibit rich topological properties. Many of them are absent in their static counterparts. One such example is the chiral edge states in anomalous Floquet topological insulators, whose description requires a new topological invariant and a novel type of bulk-edge correspondence. In this work, we propose a prototypical quenched lattice model, whose two Floquet bands could exchange their Chern numbers periodically and alternatively via touching at quasienergies 0 and $\pi$ under the change of a single system parameter. This process in principle allows the generation of as many Floquet chiral edge states as possible in a highly controllable manner. The quantized transmission of these edge states are extracted from the Floquet scattering matrix of the system. The flexibility in controlling the number of topological edge channels provided by our scheme could serve as a starting point for the engineering of robust Floquet transport devices., Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, reference added

In closed quantum systems, a dynamical phase transition is identified by nonanalytic behaviors of the return probability as a function of time. In this work, we study the nonunitary dynamics following quenches across exceptional points in a non-Hermitian lattice realized by optical resonators. Dynamical quantum phase transitions with topological signatures are found when an isolated exceptional point is crossed during the quench. A topological winding number defined by a real, noncyclic geometric phase is introduced, whose value features quantized jumps at critical times of these phase transitions and remains constant elsewhere, mimicking the plateau transitions in quantum Hall effects. This work provides a simple framework to study dynamical and topological responses in non-Hermitian systems., 7 pages, 5 figures

The double kicked rotor model is a physically realizable extension of the paradigmatic kicked rotor model in the study of quantum chaos. Even before the concept of Floquet topological phases became widely known, the discovery of the Hofstadter butterfly spectrum in the double kicked rotor model [J. Wang and J. Gong, Phys. Rev. A 77, 031405 (2008)] already suggested the importance of periodic driving to the generation of unconventional topological matter. In this work, we explore Floquet topological phases of a double kicked rotor with an extra spin-1/2 degree of freedom. The latter has been experimentally engineered in a quantum kicked rotor recently by loading Rb87 condensates into a periodically pulsed optical lattice. Under the on-resonance condition, the spin-1/2 double kicked rotor admits fruitful topological phases due to the interplay between its external and internal degrees of freedom. Each of these topological phases is characterized by a pair of winding numbers, whose combination predicts the number of topologically protected 0 and \pi-quasienergy edge states in the system. Topological phases with arbitrarily large winding numbers can be easily found by tuning the kicking strength. We discuss an experimental proposal to realize this model in kicked Rb87 condensates, and suggest to detect its topological invariants by measuring the mean chiral displacement in momentum space., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, typos removed and references added

A three-dimensional (3D) nodal-loop semimetal phase is exploited to engineer a number of intriguing phases featuring different peculiar topological surface states. In particular, by introducing various two-dimensional gap terms to a 3D tight-binding model of a nodal-loop semimetal, we obtain a rich variety of topological phases of great interest to ongoing theoretical and experimental studies, including chiral insulator, degenerate-surface-loop insulator, second-order topological insulator, as well as Weyl semimetal with tunable Fermi arc profiles. The unique concept underlying our approach is to engineer topological surface states that inherit their dispersion relations from a gap term. The results provide one rather unified principle for the creation of novel topological phases and can guide the search for new topological materials. Two-terminal transport studies are also carried out to distinguish the engineered topological phases., 5 pages of main text plus an appendix of 2 pages, totally 5 figures

Periodic driving fields can induce topological phase transitions, resulting in Floquet topological phases with intriguing properties such as very large Chern numbers and unusual edge states. Whether such Floquet topological phases could generate robust edge state conductance much larger than their static counterparts is an interesting question. In this paper, working under the Keldysh formalism, we study two-lead transport via the edge states of irradiated quantum Hall insulators using the method of recursive Floquet-Green's functions. Focusing on a harmonically-driven Hofstadter model, we show that quantized Hall conductance as large as $8e^2/h$ can be realized, but only after applying the so-called Floquet sum rule. To assess the robustness of edge state transport, we analyze the DC conductance, time-averaged current profile and local density of states. It is found that co-propagating chiral edge modes are more robust against disorder and defects as compared with the remarkable counter-propagating edge modes, as well as certain symmetry-restricted Floquet edge modes. Furthermore, we go beyond the wide-band limit, which is often assumed for the leads, to study how the conductance quantization (after applying the Floquet sum rule) of Floquet edge states can be affected if the leads have finite bandwidths. These results may be useful for the design of transport devices based on Floquet topological matter., 31 pages, 16 figures, published PRB version

The bounce solutions of self-interacting scalar fields coupled to gravity are studied using a semi-classical approach. We found that bounce solutions have a maximum required barrier curvature, in addition to the known minimum required barrier curvature. In particular, as the maximum barrier curvature is approached, the scale factor of the well-known Colemen-De Luccia (CDL) bounce solutions become divergent. Unlike the CDL or its more general oscillating bounce counterparts, this cannot be considered as a subset of the Hawking-Turok solution., 15 pages, 5 figures. Added references and typos corrected. Accepted for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravity

The interaction between electrons and the vibrational degrees of freedom of a molecular quantum dot can lead to an exponential suppression of the conductance, an effect which is commonly termed Franck-Condon blockade. Here, we investigate this effect in a quantum dot driven by time-periodic gate voltages and tunneling amplitudes using nonequilibrium Green's functions and a Floquet expansion. Building on previous results showing that driving can lift the Franck-Condon blockade, we investigate driving protocols which can be used to pump charge across the quantum dot. In particular, we show that due to the strongly coupled nature of the system, the pump current at resonance is an exponential function of the drive strength., 9 pages, 6 figures

Physics arising from two-dimensional~(2D) Dirac cones has been a topic of great theoretical and experimental interest to studies of gapless topological phases and to simulations of relativistic systems. Such $2$D Dirac cones are often characterized by a $\pi$ Berry phase and are destroyed by a perturbative mass term. By considering mean-field nonlinearity in a minimal two-band Chern insulator model, we obtain a novel type of Dirac cones that are robust to local perturbations without symmetry restrictions. Due to a different pseudo-spin texture, the Berry phase of the Dirac cone is no longer quantized in $\pi$, and can be continuously tuned as an order parameter. Furthermore, in an Aharonov-Bohm~(AB) interference setup to detect such Dirac cones, the adiabatic AB phase is found to be $\pi$ both theoretically and computationally, offering an observable topological invariant and a fascinating example where the Berry phase and AB phase are fundamentally different. We hence discover a nonlinearity-induced quantum phase transition from a known topological insulating phase to an unusual gapless topological phase., Comment: 26 pages, 4 figures

Type-II Weyl semimetals are a novel gapless topological phase of matter discovered recently in 2015. Similar to normal (type-I) Weyl semimetals, type-II Weyl semimetals consist of isolated band touching points. However, unlike type-I Weyl semimetals which have a linear energy dispersion around the band touching points forming a three dimensional (3D) Dirac cone, type-II Weyl semimetals have a tilted cone-like structure around the band touching points. This leads to various novel physical properties that are different from type-I Weyl semimetals. In order to study further the properties of type-II Weyl semimetals and perhaps realize them for future applications, generating controllable type-II Weyl semimetals is desirable. In this paper, we propose a way to generate a type-II Weyl semimetal via a generalized Harper model interacting with a harmonic driving field. When the field is treated classically, we find that only type-I Weyl points emerge. However, by treating the field quantum mechanically, some of these type-I Weyl points may turn into type-II Weyl points. Moreover, by tuning the coupling strength, it is possible to control the tilt of the Weyl points and the energy difference between two Weyl points, which makes it possible to generate a pair of mixed Weyl points of type-I and type-II. We also discuss how to physically distinguish these two types of Weyl points in the framework of our model via the Landau level structures in the presence of an artificial magnetic field. The results are of general interest to quantum optics as well as ongoing studies of Floquet topological phases., 30 pages, 9 figures

We introduce a two-band model of three-dimensional nodal line semimetals, the Fermi surface of which at half-filling may form various one-dimensional configurations of different topology. We study the symmetries and "drumhead" surface states of the model, and find that the transitions between different configurations, namely, the Lifshitz transitions, can be identified solely by the number of gap-closing points on some high-symmetry planes in the Brillouin zone. A global phase diagram of this model is also obtained accordingly. We then investigate the effect of some extra terms analogous to a two-dimensional Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling. The introduced extra terms open a gap for the nodal line semimetals and can be useful in engineering different topological insulating phases. We demonstrate that the behavior of surface Dirac cones in the resulting insulating system has a clear correspondence with the different configurations of the original nodal lines in the absence of the gap terms., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

A result of great theoretical and experimental interest, Jarzynski equality predicts a free energy change $\Delta F$ of a system at inverse temperature $\beta$ from an ensemble average of non-equilibrium exponential work, i.e., $\langle e^{-\beta W}\rangle =e^{-\beta\Delta F}$. The number of experimental work values needed to reach a given accuracy of $\Delta F$ is determined by the variance of $e^{-\beta W}$, denoted ${\rm var}(e^{-\beta W})$. We discover in this work that ${\rm var}(e^{-\beta W})$ in both harmonic and an-harmonic Hamiltonian systems can systematically diverge in non-adiabatic work protocols, even when the adiabatic protocols do not suffer from such divergence. This divergence may be regarded as a type of dynamically induced phase transition in work fluctuations. For a quantum harmonic oscillator with time-dependent trapping frequency as a working example, any non-adiabatic work protocol is found to yield a diverging ${\rm var}(e^{-\beta W})$ at sufficiently low temperatures, markedly different from the classical behavior. The divergence of ${\rm var}(e^{-\beta W})$ indicates the too-far-from-equilibrium nature of a non-adiabatic work protocol and makes it compulsory to apply designed control fields to suppress the quantum work fluctuations in order to test Jarzynski equality., Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures. revised version (fixing a minor issue in some equation numbers in v2)

Discrete time crystals have attracted considerable theoretical and experimental studies but their potential applications have remained unexplored. A particular type of discrete time crystals, termed "Majorana time crystals", is found to emerge in a periodically driven superconducting wire accommodating two different species of topological edge modes. It is further shown that different Majorana edge modes separated in the time lattice can be braided, giving rise to an unforeseen scenario for topologically protected gate operations. The proposed braiding scheme can also generate a magic state that is important for universal quantum computation. This study thus advances the quantum control in discrete time crystals and reveals their great potential arising from their time-domain properties., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures. Finalized version