Tracing the nonequilibrium topological state of Chern insulators

Abstract

Chern insulators exhibit fascinating properties which originate from the topologically nontrivial state characterized by the Chern number. How these properties change if the system is quenched between topologically distinct phases has however not been systematically explored. In this work, we investigate the quench dynamics of the prototypical massive Dirac model for topological insu- lators in two dimensions. We consider both dissipation-less dynamics and the effect of electron- phonon interactions, and ask how the transient dynamics and nonequilibrium steady states affect simple observables. Specifically, we discuss a time-dependent generalization of the Hall effect and the dichroism of the photoexcitation probability between left and right circularly polarized light. We present optimized schemes based on these observables, which can reveal the evolution of the topological state of the quenched system.