Topological phase transition in a ladder of the dimerized Kitaev superconductor chains**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11274102), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. NCET-11-0960), and the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (Grant No. 20134208110001).

Abstract

We investigate the topological properties of a ladder model of the dimerized Kitaev superconductor chains. The topological class of the system is determined by the relative phase θ between the inter- and intra-chain superconducting pairing. One topological class is the class BDI characterized by the ℤ index, and the other is the class D characterized by the ℤ2 index. For the two different topological classes, the topological phase diagrams of the system are presented by calculating two different topological numbers, i.e., the ℤ index winding number W and the ℤ2 index Majorana number ℳ, respectively. In the case of θ =0, the topological class belongs to the class BDI, multiple topological phase transitions accompanying the variation of the number of Majorana zero modes are observed. In the case of θ =π/2 it belongs to the class D. Our results show that for the given value of dimerization, the topologically nontrivial and trivial phases alternate with the variation of chemical potential.