Tunably-polarized driving light controls the phase diagram of 1D quasicrystals and 2D quantum Hall matter

Yifei Bai; David M. Weld

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arXiv · 2406.01445

Tunably-polarized driving light controls the phase diagram of 1D quasicrystals and 2D quantum Hall matter

Yifei Bai·David M. Weld

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Abstract

The well-known mapping between 1D quasiperiodic systems and 2D integer quantum Hall matter can also be applied in the presence of driving. Here we explore the effect of time-varying electric fields on the transport properties and phase diagram of Harper-Hofstadter materials. We consider light of arbitrary polarization illuminating a 2D electron gas at high magnetic field; this system maps to a 1D quasicrystal subjected to simultaneous phasonic and dipolar driving. We show that this generalized driving generates a tessellated phase diagram featuring a nested duality-protected pattern of metal-insulator transitions. Circularly or elliptically polarized light can create an extended critical phase, opening up a new route to achieving wavefunction multifractality without fine-tuning to a critical point. We describe in detail a path to experimental realization of these phenomena using lattice-trapped ultracold atoms.

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physics.atom-ph cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.quant-gas

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Yifei Bai, David M. Weld. 2024-06-03. Tunably-polarized driving light controls the phase diagram of 1D quasicrystals and 2D quantum Hall matter. https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.01445

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