Floquet topological semimetal phases of an extended kicked Harper model.

Abstract

Recent discoveries on topological characterization of gapless systems have attracted interest in both theoretical studies and experimental realizations. Examples of such gapless topological phases are Weyl semimetals, which exhibit three-dimensional (3D) Dirac cones (Weyl points), and nodal line semimetals, which are characterized by line nodes (two bands touching along a line). Inspired by our previous discoveries that the kicked Harper model exhibits many fascinating features of Floquet topological phases, in this paper we consider a generalization of the model, where two additional periodic system parameters are introduced into the Hamiltonian to serve as artificial dimensions, so as to simulate a 3D periodically driven system. We observe that by increasing the hopping strength and the kicking strength of the system, many new Floquet band touching points at Floquet quasienergies 0 and π will start to appear. Some of them are Weyl points, while the others form line nodes in the parameter space. By taking open boundary conditions along the physical dimension, edge states analogous to Fermi arcs in static Weyl semimetal systems are observed. Finally, by designing an adiabatic pumping scheme, the chirality of the Floquet-band Weyl points and the π Berry phase around Floquet-band line nodes can be manifested.