Laser-induced Phase Transitions of Topological Kondo Insulators

Abstract

In this paper, we theoretically investigate how laser fields change the nature of topological Kondo insulators(TKIs). By employing a prototypical model of TKIs, we treat the effect of the laser fields with Floquet theory, which gives effective description under high frequency laser fields. We derive the effective model of TKIs under the laser irradiation and discuss its topological properties. We demonstrate a possible realization of Floquet Chern insulators specified by various values of Chern number and reveal how the topological phase changes with increasing the laser light intensity. Furthermore, it is shown that Floquet Weyl semimetals, which have some pairs of Weyl nodes protected topologically, can emerge in the three-dimensional case. We explain how the Weyl nodes are created with varying the strength of the laser field.