Magnetic slowdown of topological edge states

Abstract

We study the propagation of wavepackets along curved interfaces between topological, magnetic materials. Our Hamiltonian is a massive Dirac operator with a magnetic potential. We construct semiclassical wavepackets propagating along the curved interface as adiabatic modulations of straight edge states under constant magnetic fields. While in the magnetic‐free case, the wavepackets propagate coherently at speed one, here they experience slowdown, dispersion, and Aharonov–Bohm effects. Several numerical simulations illustrate our results.