Robust temporal pumping in a magneto-mechanical topological insulator.

Area of Science:

• Condensed matter physics
• Metamaterials science
• Topological physics

Background:

• Sub-wavelength disorder in 1D channels causes energy transport issues like localization and backscattering.
• Quantized disorder-resilient transport is found in 2D topological insulators with broken time-reversal symmetry.
• Topological pumps reduce higher-dimensional topological phenomena to lower dimensions using an artificial dimension (space or time).

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate a temporal topological pump for robust mechanical energy transport.
• To utilize a 1D magneto-mechanical metamaterial for this purpose.
• To explore the resilience of topological transport to spatial and temporal defects.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication and experimental demonstration of a 1D magneto-mechanical metamaterial.
• Implementation of a temporal topological pump mechanism.
• Testing the system's resilience to engineered spatial and temporal defects.

Main Results:

• Successful on-demand generation of robust mechanical energy transport.
• Experimental validation of the system's unique resilience to both spatial and temporal defects.
• Observation of disorder-resilient transport in a lower-dimensional system.

Conclusions:

• Temporal topological pumps offer a novel approach to robust energy transport.
• 1D magneto-mechanical metamaterials can host robust topological transport.
• This work paves the way for exploring higher-dimensional topological physics using time as a synthetic dimension.