Transport signatures in topological systems coupled to AC fields

Abstract

We study the transport properties of a topological system coupled to an AC electric field by means of Floquet-Keldysh formalism. We consider a semi-infinite chain of dimers coupled to a semi-infinite metallic lead, and obtain the density of states and current when the system is out of equilibrium. Our formalism is non-perturbative and allows us to explore, in the thermodynamic limit, a wide range of regimes for the AC field, arbitrary values of the coupling strength to the metallic contact and corrections to the wide-band limit. We find that hybridization with the contact can change the dimerization phase, and that the current dependence on the field amplitude can be used to discriminate between them. We also show the appearance of side-bands and non-equilibrium zero-energy modes, characteristic of Floquet systems. Our results directly apply to the stability of non-equilibrium topological phases, when transport measurements are used for their detection.