An ideal rapid-cycle Thouless pump

Abstract

Thouless pumping is a fundamental instance of quantized transport, which is topologically protected. Although its theoretical importance, the adiabaticity condition is an obstacle for further practical applications. Here, focusing on the Rice-Mele model, we provide a family of finite-frequency examples that ensure both the absence of excitations and the perfect quantization of the pumped charge at the end of each cycle. This family, which contains an adiabatic protocol as a limiting case, is obtained through a mapping onto the zero curvature representation of the Euclidean sinh-Gordon equation.

Shortcuts to adiabatic Thouless pumping

“…The challenge lies in taking too long to achieve adiabatic evolution [27], which poses difficulties in maintaining quantum coherence during realistic experiments. Several methods have been explored to speed up Thouless pumping, including the introduction of dissipation [28,29] and correlations [30,31]. However, these approaches only provide marginal increases in driving frequency because they are limited by the energy gap.…”