A Theoretical Study of Cavity-modulated Topological Anderson Insulators

Abstract: Strong light-matter interaction has been demonstrated feasible for controlling phases of matter. In this work, the interplay with disorder is studied and rich phenomena are demonstrated. Specifically, the topological phases of the disordered longer-range Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model coupled with cavity photons are studied numerically. It is found that cavity photons modify the hopping amplitudes, resulting in the change of phase transition boundaries, and disorder induced topological Anderson insulating (TAI) phases even in the presence of cavity photons. The critical disorder strength at the phase transitions, determined by localization lengths, can be modulated by cavity photons through the modified hopping amplitudes. Our work extends the study of cavity-coupled solid state systems to disordered lattices.