Floquet chiral magnetic effect

Abstract

A single Weyl fermion, which is prohibited in static lattice systems by the Nielsen-Ninomiya theorem, is shown to be realized in a periodically driven three-dimensional lattice system with a topologically nontrivial Floquet unitary operator, manifesting the chiral magnetic effect. We give a topological classification of Floquet unitary operators in the Altland-Zirnbauer symmetry classes for all dimensions, and use it to predict that all gapless surface states of topological insulators and superconductors can emerge in bulk quasienergy spectra in Floquet systems.