Multiterminal Conductance of a Floquet Topological Insulator

Abstract

We report on simulations of the dc conductance and quantum Hall response of a Floquet topological insulator using Floquet scattering theory. Our results reveal that laser-induced edge states in graphene lead to quantum Hall plateaus once imperfect matching with the non-illuminated leads is lessened. But the magnitude of the Hall plateaus is not directly related to the number and chirality of all the edge states at a given energy as usual. Instead, the plateaus are dominated only by those edge states adding to the dc density of states. Therefore, the dc quantum Hall conductance of a Floquet topological insulator is not directly linked to topological invariants of the full the Floquet bands.

5 pages + 4 figures + suppl. material