Dispersive nodal fermions along grain boundaries in Floquet topological crystals

Abstract

Driven quantum materials often feature emergent topology, otherwise absent in static crystals. Dynamic bulk-boundary correspondence, encoded by nondissipative gapless modes residing near the Floquet zone center and/or boundaries, is its most prominent example. Here we show that topologically robust gapless dispersive modes appear along the grain boundaries, embedded in the interior of Floquet topological crystals, when the Floquet-Bloch band inversion occurring at a finite momentum (${\bf K}^{\rm Flq}_{\rm inv}$) and the Burgers vector (${\bf b}$) of the constituting array of dislocations satisfy ${\bf K}^{\rm Flq}_{\rm inv} \cdot {\bf b}=\pi$ (modulo $2 \pi$). Such nondissipative gapless states can be found near the center and/or edges of the Floquet Brillouin zone, irrespective of the drive protocol. We showcase these general outcomes for two-dimensional driven time-reversal symmetry breaking insulators. Promising experimental platforms hosting such dynamic topological dispersive bands in real materials are discussed.