Multiscale Invariants of Floquet Topological Insulators

Abstract

This paper analyzes Floquet topological insulators resulting from the time-harmonic irradiation of electromagnetic waves on two dimensional materials such as graphene. We analyze the bulk and edge topologies of approximations to the evolution of the light-matter interaction. Topologically protected interface states are created by spatial modulations of the drive polarization across an interface. In the high-frequency modulation regime, we obtain a sequence of topologies that apply to different time scales. Bulk-difference invariants are computed in detail and a bulk-interface correspondence is shown to apply. We also analyze a high-frequency high-amplitude modulation resulting in a large-gap effective topology topologically that remains valid only for moderately long times.