Topological swing in Bloch oscillations

We report new oscillations of wavepackets in quantum walks subjected to electric fields, that decorate the usual Bloch-Zener oscillations of insulators. The number of turning points (or sub-oscillations) within one Bloch period of these oscillations is found to be governed by the winding of the quas...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2020-11
Main Authors: Upreti, L K, Evain, C, Randoux, S, Suret, P, Amo, A, Delplace, P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Evolution
Invariants
Oscillations
Topology
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We report new oscillations of wavepackets in quantum walks subjected to electric fields, that decorate the usual Bloch-Zener oscillations of insulators. The number of turning points (or sub-oscillations) within one Bloch period of these oscillations is found to be governed by the winding of the quasienergy spectrum. Thus, this provides a new physical manifestation of a topological property of periodically driven systems that can be probed experimentally. Our model, based on an oriented scattering network, is readily implementable in photonic and cold atomic setups.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2004.14261