Topological quantization of thermal transport in classical dimerized mechanical lattices

Topological effects from interesting band structures have been discovered in electronic systems and later on in photonic, phononic, and mechanical systems. By resorting to a resemblance between the electronic band structure of the topological quantum Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model and the vibrational spectrum of a classical dimerized mechanical lattice, we identified topological edge modes that are localized at the boundary. When the dimerized lattice is connected to two reservoirs with different temperatures, the topological edge modes drastically affect thermal conductance through the lattice. We found three quantized ratios of thermal conductance resulting from different configurations with different numbers of the edge modes. Moreover, the quantization is robust against small perturbations from disorder and non-linear effects.
Reference: arXiv: 1707.06669