Modulated Floquet Topological Insulators

The application of spatially uniform light on conventional insulators can induce Floquet spectra with characteristics akin to those of topological insulators. We demonstrate that spatial modulation of light allows for remarkable control of the properties in these systems. We provide configurations to generate one-dimensional bulk modes, photoinduced currents, as well as fractionalized excitations. We show a close analogy to p-wave superconductors and use this analogy to explain our results. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.016802