Topological Superconducting Phase Research Articles

Phase diagram for hole-doped Kitaev systems on the honeycomb lattice

In extended Kitaev models on the honeycomb lattice, off-diagonal interactions (e.g., the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}},\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ terms) can give rise to non-Kitaev quantum spin liquids and several magnetically ordered phases. In the present paper, we dope holes to the system and study the resultant $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}K\text{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ model using mean-field theory. The interplay between the charge and spin degrees of freedom results in a rich phase diagram. Similar to doped cuprates, superconductors, pseudogap phases, Fermi liquid, strange metal and paramagnetic phase are generated. What is different is that, we obtain more than one superconducting phase (including a topological one) and more than one pseudogap phase no matter what the original spin state is. The Chern number of the topological superconductor is either $\ensuremath{\nu}=\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}2$ or $\ensuremath{\nu}=\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}1$, depending on the ratio $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}/|K|$ in the spin channel. We further find that an intermediate in-plane magnetic field can slightly enlarge the size of the topological superconducting phase.

Electron correlation effects in superconducting nanowires in and out of equilibrium

One-dimensional nanowires with strong spin–orbit coupling and proximity-induced superconductivity are predicted to exhibit topological superconductivity with condensed-matter analogues to Majorana fermions. Here, the nonequilibrium Green’s function approach with the generalized Kadanoff–Baym ansatz is employed to study the electron-correlation effects and their role in the topological superconducting phase in and out of equilibrium. Electron-correlation effects are found to affect the transient signatures regarding the zero-energy Majorana states, when the superconducting nanowire is subjected to external perturbations such as magnetic-field quenching, laser-pulse excitation, and coupling to biased normal-metal leads.

Topological superconductors in one-dimensional mosaic lattices

We study topological superconductors in a one-dimensional (1D) mosaic lattice whose on-site potentials are modulated for equally spaced sites. When the system is topologically nontrivial, Majorana zero modes appear at the two ends of the 1D lattice. By calculating energy spectra and topological invariant of the system, we find the interval of the mosaic modulation of the on-site potential, whether it is periodic, quasiperiodic, or randomly distributed, can influence the topological properties significantly. For an even interval of the mosaic potential, the system will exist in the topological superconducting phase for very large or even infinitely strong on-site potentials. When the interval is odd, however, the system undergoes a topological phase transition and enters into the trivial phase as the on-site potentials become stronger than a critical value, except for some special cases in the commensurate lattices. These conclusions are proven and the phase boundaries determined analytically by exploiting the method of transfer matrix. They reveal that robust Majorana zero modes can arise in 1D mosaic lattice independent of the strength of the spatially modulated potentials.

High-T c superconductor Fe(Se,Te) monolayer: an intrinsic, scalable and electrically tunable Majorana platform.

Iron-based superconductors have been identified as a novel platform for realizing Majorana zero modes (MZMs) without heterostructures, due to their intrinsic topological properties and high-Tc superconductivity. In the two-dimensional limit, the FeTe1−xSex monolayer, a topological band inversion has recently been experimentally observed. Here, we propose to create MZMs by applying an in-plane magnetic field to the FeTe1−xSex monolayer and tuning the local chemical potential via electric gating. Owing to the anisotropic magnetic couplings on edges, an in-plane magnetic field drives the system into an intrinsic high-order topological superconductor phase with Majorana corner modes. Furthermore, MZMs can occur at the domain wall of chemical potentials at either one edge or certain type of tri-junction in the two-dimensional bulk. Our study not only reveals the FeTe1−xSex monolayer as a promising Majorana platform with scalability and electrical tunability and within reach of contemporary experimental capability, but also provides a general principle to search for realistic realization of high-order topological superconductivity.

Chiral topological superconductivity in Josephson junctions

We consider a heterostructure of semiconductor layers sandwiched between two superconductors, forming a two-dimensional Josephson junction. Applying a Zeeman field perpendicular to the junction can render a topological superconducting phase with chiral Majorana edge mode. We show that the phase difference between two superconductors can efficiently reduce the magnetic field required to achieve the chiral topological superconductivity, providing an experimentally feasible setup to realize chiral Majorana edge modes. We also construct a lattice Hamiltonian of the setup to demonstrate the chiral Majorana edge mode and the Majorana bound state localized in vortices.

Vortex-line topology in iron-based superconductors with and without second-order topology

The band topology of a superconductor is known to have profound impact on the existence of Majorana zero modes in vortices. As iron-based superconductors with band inversion and $s_{\pm}$-wave pairing can give rise to time-reversal invariant second-order topological superconductivity, manifested by the presence of helical Majorana hinge states in three dimensions, we are motivated to investigate the interplay between the second-order topology and the vortex lines in both weak- and strong-Zeeman-field regimes. In the weak-Zeeman-field regime, we find that vortex lines far away from the hinges are topologically nontrivial in the weakly doped regime, regardless of whether the second-order topology is present or not. However, when the superconductor falls into the second-order topological phase and a topological vortex line is moved close to the helical Majorana hinge states, we find that their hybridization will trivialize the vortex line and transfer robust Majorana zero modes to the hinges. Furthermore, when the Zeeman field is large enough, we find that the helical Majorana hinge states are changed into chiral Majorana hinge modes and thus a chiral second-order topological superconducting phase is realized. In this regime, the vortex lines are always topologically trivial, no matter how far away they are from the chiral Majorana hinge modes. By incorporating a realistic assumption of inhomogeneous superconductivity, our findings can explain the recent experimental observation of the peculiar coexistence and evolution of topologically nontrivial and trivial vortex lines in iron-based superconductors.

Non-Hermitian Kitaev chain with complex periodic and quasiperiodic potentials* *Project supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant Nos. 2016YFA0300600 and 2016YFA0302104), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12074410, 12047502, 11934015, 11947301, and 11774397), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB33000000), and the fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation

We study the topological properties of the one-dimensional non-Hermitian Kitaev model with complex either periodic or quasiperiodic potentials. We obtain the energy spectrum and the phase diagrams of the system by using the transfer matrix method as well as the topological invariant. The phase transition points are given analytically. The Majorana zero modes in the topological nontrivial regimes are obtained. Focusing on the quasiperiodic potential, we obtain the phase transition from the topological superconducting phase to the Anderson localization, which is accompanied with the Anderson localization–delocalization transition in this non-Hermitian system. We also find that the topological regime can be reduced by increasing the non-Hermiticity.

Topological superconductivity in proximity to type-II superconductors

One-dimensional systems proximity-coupled to a superconductor can be driven into a topological superconducting phase by an external magnetic field. Here, we investigate the effect of vortices created by the magnetic field in a type-II superconductor providing the proximity effect. We identify different ways in which the topological protection of Majorana modes can be compromised and discuss strategies to circumvent these detrimental effects. Our findings are also relevant to topological phases of proximitized quantum Hall edge states.

Majorana and non-Majorana modes in a nanowire in partially proximity to a superconductor

We investigate the Majorana and non-Majorana modes in a nanowire in partial proximity to a superconductor, in which the gapped superconductor will play different roles in different topological regimes. In the gapped topological superconducting phase, it plays the role of a topological barrier, which confines some localized edge modes in the quantum dot (QD) region. The probability for the wave function in this region can approach unity by tuning the system parameters. These low-lying localized modes exhibit linear spectra with equal energy level spacing, with eigenvalues εn=vFnπ/(2L), where vF is the Fermi velocity, L is the size of the QD region, and n∈Z. We demonstrate these features using a spinless nanowire in proximity to a p-wave superconductor and a spin–orbit coupled semiconductor nanowire in proximity to a s-wave superconductor. A simple picture is proposed to understand the behavior of these results. However, in the trivial superconducting phase when both bands are occupied in the spin–orbit coupled mode, we observe some non-Majorana modes, with complicated low-lying excited spectra, which resembles that reported in experiments. These differences are rooted deeply in the bulk-edge correspondence. These observations may be able to facilitate the identification of Majorana zero modes in experiments.

High thermoelectrical figure of merit in chiral topological superconductor junctions

Performing the non-equilibrium Green’s function method, we calculate the Seebeck coefficient (S) and the thermoelectrical figure of merit (ZT) in the quantum anomalous Hall insulator-topological superconductor-quantum anomalous Hall insulator hybrid structure with temperature gradient. It is found that a high thermoelectrical figure of merit can be achieved with the helical topological superconductor phase. The S and the ZT are mainly affected by the temperature and the device size. At a certain temperature and the right device size, the Seebeck coefficient and the figure of merit can reach very high values.

Floquet second order topological superconductor based on unconventional pairing

We theoretically investigate the Floquet generation of second-order topological superconducting (SOTSC) phase in the high-temperature platform both in two-dimension (2D) and three-dimension (3D). Starting from a $d$-wave superconducting pairing gap, we periodically kick the mass term to engineer the dynamical SOTSC phase within a specific range of the strength of the drive. Under such dynamical breaking of time-reversal symmetry (TRS), we show the emergence of the \textit{weak} SOTSC phase, harboring eight corner modes \ie two zero-energy Majorana per corner, with vanishing Floquet quadrupole moment. On the other hand, our study interestingly indicates that upon the introduction of an explicit TRS breaking Zeeman field, the \textit{weak} SOTSC phase can be transformed into \textit{strong} SOTSC phase, hosting one zero-energy Majorana mode per corner, with quantized quadrupole moment. We also compute the Floquet Wannier spectra that further establishes the \textit{weak} and \textit{strong} nature of these phases. We numerically verify our protocol computing the exact Floquet operator in open boundary condition and then analytically validate our findings with the low energy effective theory (in the high-frequency limit). The above protocol is applicable for 3D as well where we find one dimensional (1D) hinge mode in the SOTSC phase. We then show that these corner modes are robust against moderate disorder and the topological invariants continue to exhibit quantized nature until disorder becomes substantially strong. The existence of zero-energy Majorana modes in these higher-order phases is guaranteed by the anti-unitary spectral symmetry.

Floquet generation of a second-order topological superconductor

We theoretically investigate the Floquet generation of a second-order topological superconducting (SOTSC) phase hosting Majorana corner modes (MCMs), considering a quantum spin Hall insulator with a proximity-induced superconducting $s$-wave pairing in it. Our dynamical prescription consists of the periodic kick in time-reversal symmetry breaking the in-plane magnetic field and fourfold rotational symmetry breaking the mass term in the bulk while these Floquet MCMs are preserved by antiunitary particle-hole symmetry. The first driving protocol always leads to four zero-energy MCMs (i.e., one Majorana state per corner) as a sign of a strong SOTSC phase. Interestingly, the second protocol can result in a weak SOTSC phase, harboring eight zero-energy MCMs (two Majorana states per corner), in addition to the strong SOTSC phase. We characterize the topological nature of these phases by a Floquet quadrupolar moment and Floquet Wannier spectrum. We believe that relying on the recent experimental advancement in the driven systems and proximity - superconductivity, our schemes may be possible to test in the future.

Chiral Dirac superconductors: Second-order and boundary-obstructed topology

We analyze the topological properties of a chiral ${p}+i{p}$ superconductor for a two-dimensional metal/semimetal with four Dirac points. Such a system has been proposed to realize second-order topological superconductivity and host corner Majorana modes. We show that with an additional $\mathsf{C}_4$ rotational symmetry, the system is in an intrinsic higher-order topological superconductor phase, and with a lower and more natural $\mathsf{C}_2$ symmetry, is in a boundary-obstructed topological superconductor phase. The boundary topological obstruction is protected by a bulk Wannier gap. However, we show that the well-known nested-Wilson loop is in general unquantized despite the particle-hole symmetry, and thus fails as a topological invariant. Instead, we show that the higher-order topology and boundary-obstructed topology can be characterized using an alternative defect classification approach, in which the corners of a finite sample is treated as a defect of a space-filling Hamiltonian. We establish "Dirac+$({p}+i{p})$" as a sufficient condition for second-order topological superconductivity.

Double Majorana vortex zero modes in superconducting topological crystalline insulators with surface rotation anomaly

The interplay of time-reversal and $n$-fold rotation symmetries ($n=2,4,6$) is known to bring a new class of topological crystalline insulators (TCIs) having $n$ surface Dirac cones due to surface rotation anomaly. We show that the proximity-induced $s$-wave superconductivity on the surface of these TCIs yields a topological superconducting phase in which two Majorana zero modes are bound to a vortex, and that $n$-fold rotation symmetry ($n=2,4,6$) enriches the topological classification of a superconducting vortex from $\mathbb{Z}_2$ to $\mathbb{Z}_2\times\mathbb{Z}_2$. Using a model of a three-dimensional high-spin topological insulator with $s$-wave superconductivity and two-fold rotation symmetry, we show that, with increasing chemical potential, the number of Majorana zero modes at one end of a vortex changes as $2\to1\to0$ through two topological vortex phase transitions. In addition, we show that additional magnetic-mirror symmetry further enhances the topological classification to $\mathbb{Z} \times \mathbb{Z}$

Non-locality effect of Majorana fermions via local entanglement entropy

In this paper, to characterize the effect of topological defects on the entanglement of topological states, we introduce the concept of local entanglement entropy. By using the spinless [Formula: see text] superconductor with quantized vortices, we numerically calculated the local entanglement entropy. In the topological superconducting (weak-pairing) phase, we found that the local entanglement entropy turns to 0.5 for a Majorana zero mode. For the system with two/four Majorana zero modes, by calculating local entanglement entropy, we found the non-locality effect of Majorana zero modes. In the future, we will use local entanglement entropy to characterize the defect effect on other many-body systems with long entanglement, for example, topological order and quantum spin liquid.

Kramers pairs of Majorana corner states in a topological insulator bilayer

We consider a system consisting of two tunnel-coupled two-dimensional topological insulators proximitized by a top and bottom superconductor with a phase difference of $\pi$ between them. We show that this system exhibits a time-reversal invariant second-order topological superconducting phase characterized by the presence of a Kramers pair of Majorana corner states at all four corners of a rectangular sample. We furthermore investigate the effect of a weak time-reversal symmetry breaking perturbation and show that an in-plane Zeeman field leads to an even richer phase diagram exhibiting two nonequivalent phases with two Majorana corner states per corner as well as an intermediate phase with only one Majorana corner state per corner. We derive our results analytically from continuum models describing our system. In addition, we also provide independent numerical confirmation of the resulting phases using discretized lattice representations of the models, which allows us to demonstrate the robustness of the topological phases and the Majorana corner states against parameter variations and potential disorder.

New types of topological superconductors under local magnetic symmetries.

We classify gapped topological superconducting (TSC) phases of one-dimensional quantum wires with local magnetic symmetries, in which the time-reversal symmetry n}{}mathcal {T} is broken, but its combinations with certain crystalline symmetries, such as n}{}M_x mathcal {T}, n}{}C_{2z} mathcal {T}, n}{}C_{4z}mathcal {T} and n}{}C_{6z}mathcal {T}, are preserved. Our results demonstrate that an equivalent BDI class TSC can be realized in the n}{}M_x mathcal {T} or n}{}C_{2z} mathcal {T} superconducting wire, which is characterized by a chiral Zc invariant. More interestingly, we also find two types of totally new TSC phases in the n}{}C_{4z}mathcal {T} and n}{}C_{6z}mathcal {T} superinducting wires, which are beyond the known AZ class, and are characterized by a helical Zh invariant and Zh⊕Zc invariants, respectively. In the Zh TSC phase, Z pairs of Majorana zero modes (MZMs) are protected at each end. In the n}{}C_{6z}mathcal {T} case, the MZMs can be either chiral or helical, and even helical-chiral coexisting. The minimal models preserving n}{}C_{4z}mathcal {T} or n}{}C_{6z}mathcal {T} symmetry are presented to illustrate their novel TSC properties and MZMs.

Induced half-metallicity and gapless chiral topological superconductivity in the CrI3−Pb interface

We study a two-dimensional heterostructure comprised of a monolayer of the magnetic insulator chromium triiodide (CrI$_3$) on a superconducting lead (Pb) substrate. Through first-principles computation and a tight-binding model, we demonstrate that charge transfer from the Pb substrate dopes the CrI$_3$ into an effective half-metal, allowing for the onset of a gapless topological superconductivity phase via the proximity effect. This phase, in which there exists a superconducting gap only in part of the Fermi surface, is shown to occur generically in 2D half-metal-superconductor heterostructures which lack two-fold in-plane rotational symmetry. However, a sufficiently large proximity-induced pairing amplitude can bring such a system into a fully-gapped topological superconducting phase. As such, these results are expected to better define the optimal 2D component materials for future proposed TSC heterostructures.

First- and Second-Order Topological Superconductivity and Temperature-Driven Topological Phase Transitions in the Extended Hubbard Model with Spin-Orbit Coupling.

The combination of spin-orbit coupling with interactions results in many exotic phases of matter. In this Letter, we investigate the superconducting pairing instability of the two-dimensional extended Hubbard model with both Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling within the mean-field level at both zero and finite temperature. We find that both first- and second-order time-reversal symmetry breaking topological gapped phases can be achieved under appropriate parameters and temperature regimes due to the presence of a favored even-parity s+id-wave pairing even in the absence of an external magnetic field or intrinsic magnetism. This results in two branches of chiral Majorana edge states on each edge or a single zero-energy Majorana corner state at each corner of the sample. Interestingly, we also find that not only does tuning the doping level lead to a direct topological phase transition between these two distinct topological gapped phases, but also using the temperature as a highly controllable and reversible tuning knob leads to different direct temperature-driven topological phase transitions between gapped and gapless topological superconducting phases. Our findings suggest new possibilities in interacting spin-orbit coupled systems by unifying both first- and higher-order topological superconductors in a simple but realistic microscopic model.

Time-reversal invariant topological superconductivity in planar Josephson bijunction

We consider a Josephson bijunction consisting of a thin $SIS$ $\pi$-Josephson junction sandwiched between two-dimensional semiconducting layers with strong Rashba spin-orbit interaction. Each of these layers forms an $SNS$ junction due to proximity-induced superconductivity. The $SIS$ junction is assumed to be thin enough such that the two Rashba layers are tunnel-coupled. We show that, by tuning external gates, this system can be controllably brought into a time-reversal invariant topological superconducting phase with a Kramers pair of Majorana bound states being localized at the end of the normal region for a large parameter phase space. In particular, in the strong spin-orbit interaction limit, the topological phase can be accessed already in the regime of small tunneling amplitudes.