Transport, shot noise, and topology in AC-driven dimer arrays

Nanotechnology. 2016 Nov 11;27(45):454002. doi: 10.1088/0957-4484/27/45/454002. Epub 2016 Oct 11.

Abstract

We analyze an AC-driven dimer chain connected to a strongly biased electron source and drain. It turns out that the resulting transport exhibits fingerprints of topology. They are particularly visible in the driving-induced current suppression and the Fano factor. Thus, shot noise measurements provide a topological phase diagram as a function of the driving parameters. The observed phenomena can be explained physically by a mapping to an effective time-independent Hamiltonian and the emergence of edge states. Moreover, by considering quantum dissipation, we determine the requirements for the coherence properties in a possible experimental realization. For the computation of the zero-frequency noise, we develop an efficient method based on matrix-continued fractions.