Time-based Chern number in periodically driven systems in the adiabatic limit

2023

To define the topology of driven systems, recent works have proposed synthetic dimensions as a way to uncover the underlying parameter space of topological invariants. Using time as a synthetic dimension, together with a momentum dimension, gives access to a synthetic two-dimensional (2D) Chern number. It is, however, still unclear how the synthetic 2D Chern number is related to the Chern number that is defined from a parametric variable that evolves with time. Here we show that in periodically driven systems in the adiabatic limit, the synthetic 2D Chern number is a multiple of the Chern number defined from the parametric variable. The synthetic 2D Chern number can thus be engineered via h…