Floquet–Dirac fermions in monolayer graphene by Wannier functions

Abstract

Wannier functions have been widely applied in the study of topological properties and Floquet–Bloch bands of materials. Usually, the real-space Wannier functions are linked to the k-space Hamiltonian by two types of Fourier transform (FT), namely lattice-gauge FT (LGFT) and atomic-gauge FT (AGFT), but the differences between these two FTs on Floquet–Bloch bands have rarely been addressed. Taking monolayer graphene as an example, we demonstrate that LGFT gives different topological descriptions on the Floquet–Bloch bands for the structurally equivalent directions which are obviously unphysical, while AGFT is immune to this dilemma. We introduce the atomic-laser periodic effect to explain the different Floquet–Bloch bands between the LGFT and AGFT. Using AGFT, we showed that linearly polarized laser could effectively manipulate the properties of the Dirac fermions in graphene, such as the location, generation and annihilation of Dirac points. This proposal offers not only deeper understanding on the role of Wannier functions in solving the Floquet systems, but also a promising platform to study the interaction between the time-periodic laser field and materials.