Topological holographic quench dynamics in a synthetic frequency dimension

The notion of topological phases extended to dynamical systems stimulates extensive studies, of which the characterization of nonequilibrium topological invariants is a central issue and usually necessitates the information of quantum dynamics in both the time and momentum dimensions. Here, we propose the topological holographic quench dynamics in synthetic dimension, and also show it provides a highly efficient scheme to characterize photonic topological phases. A pseudospin model is constructed with ring resonators in a synthetic lattice formed by frequencies of light, and the quench dynamics is induced by initializing a trivial state, which evolves under a topological Hamiltonian. Our key prediction is that the complete topological information of the Hamiltonian is encoded in quench dynamics solely in the time dimension, and is further mapped to lower-dimensional space, manifesting the holographic features of the dynamics. In particular, two fundamental time scales emerge in the dynamical evolution, with one mimicking the topological band on the momentum dimension and the other characterizing the residue time evolution of the state after the quench. For this, a universal duality between the quench dynamics and the equilibrium topological phase of the spin model is obtained in the time dimension by extracting information from the field evolution dynamics in modulated ring systems in simulations. This work also shows that the photonic synthetic frequency dimension provides an efficient and powerful way to explore the topological nonequilibrium dynamics.