Floquet Majorana Edge Mode and Non-Abelian Anyons in a Driven Kitaev Model

Abstract

We theoretically study laser driven nonequilibrium states in the Kitaev honeycomb model with a magnetoelectric cross coupling. We show that a topological spin liquid with a gapless chiral edge mode emerges when we apply an elliptically or circularly polarized laser. This is a strongly correlated quantum spin version of the Floquet topological insulator. In the topological phase, the edge mode is made from Majorana fermions and the bulk has gapped non-Abelian anyon excitations.