Floquet-driven light transport in programmable photonic processors via discretized evolution of synthetic magnetic fields

Abstract

Photons, unlike electrons, do not couple directly to magnetic fields, yet synthetic gauge fields can impart magnetic-like responses and enable directional transport. Discretized Floquet evolution provides a controlled route, where the time-ordered sequencing of non-commuting Hamiltonians imprints complex hopping phases and breaks time-reversal symmetry. However, stabilizing such driven dynamics and observing unambiguous signatures of these effects on a reconfigurable platform has remained challenging. Here we demonstrate synthetic gauge fields for light on a programmable photonic processor by implementing discretized Floquet drives that combine static and dynamic phases. The resulting dynamics exhibit chiral circulation that reverses under drive inversion, flux-controlled interference with high visibility, and robust directional flow stabilized by optimizing the driving period. We further characterize the system using a first-harmonic phase as an order parameter, whose per-period winding number quantifies angular drift and reverses sign with the drive order. These results establish discretized Floquet evolution as a versatile framework for driven photonics, providing a programmable route to engineer gauge fields, stabilize driven phases, and probe winding-number signatures of chiral transport.