Floquet engineering and simulating exceptional rings with a quantum spin system

Abstract: Time-periodic driving in the form of coherent radiation provides powerful tool for the manipulation of topological materials or synthetic quantum matter. In this paper we propose a scheme to realize non-Hermitian semimetals exhibiting exceptional rings in the spectra through Floquet engineering. A transition from a concentric pair of the rings to a dipolar pair is observed. The concentric pair carries only a quantized Berry phase while the dipolar pair possesses opposite Chern numbers in addition, signaling a topological Lifshitz transition of the Fermi surface. The transport properties of the system are addressed, and we find that this transition process is accompanied by the emergency of a nontrivial Hall conductivity. Furthermore, we explore the quantum simulation of non-Hermitian semimetals with a quantum spin system and the characterization of the topology via the long-time dynamics.