Polarization-controlled Floquet engineering in twisted photonic lattices

Abstract Floquet engineering has emerged as a powerful approach for both classical and quantum systems, enabling versatile exploration of synthetic dimensions, topological phases, and quantum information processing. Further advances, however, require precise and continuous control over both the magnitude and sign of the coupling coefficient. Although static modal-engineering approaches can tune both, existing Floquet photonic platforms typically rely on geometric modulation, auxiliary structures, or phase engineering. Continuous tuning of the coupling coefficient in both magnitude and sign within a Floquet period therefore remains challenging. Here, we present a compact Floquet platform based on twisted photonic waveguide arrays, in which the twist-induced variation of the relative polarization angle between adjacent waveguides directly tunes the coupling coefficient through zero, allowing continuous access to positive and negative values with different magnitudes. To highlight the core capability of the platform, we focus on representative driven phenomena in both one- and two-dimensional lattices: Floquet flat bands and the associated period-n $$\Lambda$$ Λ oscillations in one-dimensional lattices, as well as chirality reversal of topological edge states in two-dimensional lattices.