Engineering of topological phases in driven thin topological insulators: Structure inversion asymmetry effect

Abstract

We investigate the effect of a high frequency electromagnetic field with both of circularly and linearly polarization, on the emergence of quantum phases on thin topological insulators. Simultaneously, the influence of the system parameters (such as magnetic impurity, thickness engineering and structural inversion asymmetry of the potential) on emergence of topological phases is studied. We take our attention to the high frequency regime in which it is possible to consider an expansion for the Floquet Hamiltonian in terms of orders of 1/\Omega. The topological invariants are determined and it is demonstrated that some phase transitions between quantum anomalous Hall insulator, quantum pseudospin Hall insulator, quantum spin Hall insulator and normal insulator can be induced by altering the aforementioned parameters of the system. To avoid heating process, tuning of the system parameters gives us the opportunity to observe these phase transitions at small intensities of light.