A General Time-Periodic Driving Approach to Realize Topological Phases in Cold Atomic Systems

For time-reversal symmetric cold atomic insulating systems, it is found that the usual driving approach based on electromagnetic field used in solid state systems loses its power to drive them from trivial regimes to topological regimes if the driven systems still hold time-reversal symmetry (TRS). For such systems, we point out that simply varying the optical lattice potential periodically provides a general and effective way to drive them into topological regimes without breaking their symmetries. Based on this approach, we find that the time-reversal symmetric Kane-Mele model can be effectively driven from the trivial phase to topological phases named as Floquet Quantum Spin Hall insulator. Due to the existence of two gaps in the Floquet system, this novel state of matter can stably host one or two pair of gapless helical states on the same boundary, which suggests this state is not a simple analog of the Quantum Spin Hall insulator. This new driving approach to a system without TRS is also investigated.