Simulating Dynamical Phases of Chiral p+ip Superconductors with a Trapped ion Magnet

Abstract

Two-dimensional p+ip superconductors and superfluids are systems that feature chiral behavior emerging from the Cooper pairing of electrons or neutral fermionic atoms with nonzero angular momentum. Their realization has been a longstanding goal because they offer great potential utility for quantum computation and memory. However, they have so far eluded experimental observation both in solid-state systems as well as in ultracold quantum gases. Here, we propose to leverage the tremendous control offered by rotating two-dimensional trapped-ion crystals in a Penning trap to simulate the dynamical phases of two-dimensional p+ip superfluids. This is accomplished by mapping the presence or absence of a Cooper pair into an effective spin-1/2 system encoded in the ions’ electronic levels. We show how to infer the topological properties of the dynamical phases, and discuss the role of beyond mean-field corrections. More broadly, our work opens the door to use trapped-ion systems to explore exotic models of topological superconductivity and also paves the way to generate and manipulate skyrmionic spin textures in these platforms.Received 21 April 2022Revised 16 September 2022Accepted 31 October 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.040324Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasPenning trapsQuantum information with trapped ionsQuantum simulationSuperconductivityTopological superconductorsp-waveAtomic, Molecular & OpticalCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics