Network models of photonic Floquet topological insulators

Abstract

A recently proposed class of photonic topological insulators is shown to map onto Chalker-Coddington-type networks, which were originally formulated to study disordered quantum Hall systems. Such network models are equivalent to the Floquet states of periodically driven lattices. We show that they can exhibit topologically protected edge states even if all bands have zero Chern number, which is a characteristic property of Floquet band structures. These edge states can be counted by an adiabatic pumping invariant based on the winding number of the coefficient of reflection from one edge of the network.