Quantitative measure of topological protection in Floquet systems through the spectral localizer (2410.24176v1)

Abstract: The standard understanding of topological protection from band theory is that a system's topology cannot change without first closing the bulk band gap. However, in Floquet systems, this typical definition of topological protection is one step removed from the experimentally accessible system parameters, as the relationship between the disorder in a system's instantaneous Hamiltonian and its Floquet Hamiltonian that defines its topology is not straightforward. Here, we demonstrate that the spectral localizer framework for classifying material topology can be applied to Floquet systems and prove that its associated measure of topological protection can be understood in terms of the integrated disorder across the system's instantaneous Hamiltonians. As such, we have derived a quantitative bound on a Floquet system's topological protection in terms of the instantaneous system. Moreover, we show the utility of these bounds in both ordinary an anomalous Floquet Chern insulators.