Chiral Floquet Phases

Speaker: Adrian Po, Harvard University

When: April 19, 2017 (Wed), 02:30PM to 03:30PM (add to my calendar)
Location: SCI 328

This event is part of the Condensed Matter Theory Seminar Series.

Periodically driven quantum systems, aka Floquet problems, have been recently identified as a prime platform for the study of topologically nontrivial quantum dynamics. Absent the notion of ground state(s), many-body localization plays a crucial role in the definition of such Floquet phases. Strikingly, some of the discovered phases are intrinsically dynamical, in the sense that they do not admit static counterparts. In this talk, I will describe our results on the study of chiral phases in this context. First, I will discuss an analog of the integer quantum Hall phases, where instead of charge or heat, quantum information is pumped along the edge in a unidirectional manner. Next, I will present an extension of this phase into one featuring intrinsic topological order, where the pumping of emergent Majorana fermions along the edge is, surprisingly, accompanied by a necessary dynamical anyon transmutation in the bulk