Staircase to higher-order topological phase transitions

Abstract

We find a series of topological phase transitions of increasing order, beyond the more standard second-order phase transition in a one-dimensional topological superconductor. The jumps in the order of the transitions depend on the range of the pairing interaction, which is parametrized by an algebraic decay with exponent $\ensuremath{\alpha}$. Remarkably, in the limit $\ensuremath{\alpha}=1$ the order of the topological transition becomes infinite. We compute the critical exponents for the series of higher-order transitions in exact form and find that they fulfill the hyperscaling relation. We also study the critical behavior at the boundary of the system and discuss potential experimental platforms of magnetic atoms in superconductors.