Floquet engineering of topological phases protected by emergent symmetries under resonant drives

Abstract

Floquet engineering is one of the most vigorous fields in periodically driven (Floquet) systems, with which we can control phases of matter usually by high-frequency drives. In this paper, with Floquet engineering by a combination of high-frequency drives and resonant drives, we propose a way to realize nontrivial topological phases protected by a ${\mathbb{Z}}_2\times {\mathbb{Z}}_2$ symmetry only in the presence of a ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ symmetry, using a robust emergent ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ symmetry induced by the resonant drives. Moreover, the symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases are switchable between nontrivial and trivial phases only by the direction of a static transverse field, and even perturbations on the resonant drive can be utilized to realize richer SPT phases. We also discuss the real-time dynamics of the model, and find that which topological phases the system lies in can be distinguished by a period doubling of a nonlocal order parameter, as with discrete time crystals. A realization or a control of nontrivial SPT phases without the required symmetries by resonant drives, proposed in this paper, would shed a new light on the observation of topological phenomena in nonequilibrium setups.

13 pages, 6 figures