Review topological pumping MCQST

Our review on topological pumping was featured by MCQST!

Thouless pumping provides one of the simplest manifestations of topology in quantum systems and has attracted a lot of recent interest, both theoretically and experimentally. Since the seminal works by David Thouless and Qian Niu in 1983 and 1984, it has been argued that the quantization of the pumped charge is robust against weak disorder, but a clear characterization of the localization properties of the relevant states, and the breakdown of quantized transport in the presence of interaction or out of the adiabatic approximation, has long been debated. Thouless pumping is also the first example of a topological phase emerging in a periodically driven system. Driven systems can exhibit exotic topological phases without any static analogue and have been the subject of many recent proposals both in fermionic and in bosonic systems. Recent experimental studies have been performed in diverse platforms ranging from cold atoms to photonics and condensed-matter systems. This Review serves as a basis to understand the robustness of the topology of slowly driven systems and also highlights the rich properties of topological pumps and their diverse range of applications. Examples include systems with synthetic dimensions or work towards understanding higher-order topological phases, which underline the relevance of topological pumping for the fast-growing field of topological quantum matter.

Original publication:

Thouless pumping and topology,
Roberta Citro, Monika Aidelsburger, Nature Reviews Physics 5, 87–101 (2023)