Topological phase transition driven by magnetic field in one-dimensional topological superconductor rings

Abstract

We study the energy spectrum and transport property of a one-dimensional Kitaev quantum ring in a threading magnetic field. It is demonstrated that the magnetic field can effectively induce topological phase transitions for the ring in the topologically nontrivial phase at the zero magnetic field. However, for the ring in the topologically trivial phase at the zero field, there is no topological phase transition, and the energy spectrum of the system is always gapped. The magnetic field can control the appearance and disappearance of Majorana zero-energy states in the Kitaev quantum ring, when one half of the ring is in the topologically nontrivial phase and the other half is in the topologically trivial phase. Furthermore, we calculate the transport properties of the ring connected by two semi-infinite leads. It is found that the resonant peaks of transmission coefficient ${T}_{\text{QT}}$ correspond to the critical points of topological phase transition. In addition, we extend our findings to a more realistic quantum ring adopting a semiconductor nanowire with high spin-orbit coupling, superconducting $s$-wave pairing, and Zeeman splitting, and prove that our findings are universal.