A local quantized marker for topological magnons from circular dichroism

Abstract: The low-energy excitations of a spin system can display Bloch bands with non-trivial topological properties. While topological magnons can be identified through the detection of chiral propagating modes at the sample's edge, an intriguing approach would be to directly probe their topological nature via localized measurements deep within the bulk. In this work, we introduce a quantized topological marker suitable for topological spin systems, which can be experimentally accessed by combining a local driven-dissipative preparation scheme with a circular-dichroic measurement. Demonstrated on a 2D ferromagnetic Heisenberg spin system incorporating Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions, this method effectively maps a local Chern marker with single-site resolution while inherently accounting for magnon losses. Our work offers a general strategy to access local topological markers in bosonic settings within a driven-dissipative framework.