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arXiv:1407.5321 · Physical Review E

Possibility of adiabatic transport of a Majorana edge state through an extended gapless region

Atanu Rajak, Tanay Nag, Amit Dutta

Published Oct 3, 2014• 16 citations
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Abstract

In the context of slow quenching dynamics of a p-wave superconducting chain, it has been shown that a Majorana edge state cannot be adiabatically transported from one topological phase to the other separated by a quantum critical line. On the other hand, the inclusion of a phase factor in the hopping term, which breaks the effective time-reversal invariance, results in an extended gapless region between two topological phases. We show that for a finite chain with an open boundary condition, there exists a nonzero probability that a Majorana edge state can be adiabatically transported from one topological phase to the other across this gapless region following a slow quench of the superconducting term; this happens for an optimum transit time, which is proportional to the system size and diverges for a thermodynamically large chain. We attribute this phenomenon to the mixing of the Majorana only with low-lying inverted bulk states. Remarkably, the Majorana state always persists with the same probability even after the quenching is stopped. For a periodic chain, on the other hand, we find a Kibble-Zurek scaling of the defect density with a renormalized rate of quenching.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.90.042107

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In the context of slow quenching dynamics of a p-wave superconducting chain, it has been shown that a Majorana edge state cannot be adiabatically transported from one topological phase to the other separated by a quantum critical line. On the other hand, the inclusion of a phase factor in the hopping term, which breaks the effective time-reversal invariance, results in an extended gapless region between two topological phases. We show that for a finite chain with an open boundary condition, there exists a nonzero probability that a Majorana edge state can be adiabatically transported from one topological phase to the other across this gapless region following a slow quench of the superconducting term; this happens for an optimum transit time, which is proportional to the system size and diverges for a thermodynamically large chain. We attribute this phenomenon to the mixing of the Majorana only with low-lying inverted bulk states. Remarkably, the Majorana state always persists with the same probability even after the quenching is stopped. For a periodic chain, on the other hand, we find a Kibble-Zurek scaling of the defect density with a renormalized rate of quenching.
We consider the temporal evolution of a zero-energy edge Majorana of a spinless p-wave superconducting chain following a sudden change of a parameter of the Hamiltonian. Starting from one of the topological phases that has an edge Majorana, the system is suddenly driven to the other topological phase or to the (topologically) trivial phases and to the quantum critical points (QCPs) separating these phases. The survival probability of the initial edge Majorana as a function of time is studied following the quench. Interestingly when the chain is quenched to the QCP, we find a nearly perfect oscillation of the survival probability, indicating that the Majorana travels back and forth between two ends, with a time period that scales with the system size. We also generalize to the situation when there is a next-nearest-neighbor hopping in a superconducting chain and there results in a pair of edge Majorana at each end of the chain in the topological phase. We show that the frequency of oscillation of the survival probability gets doubled in this case. We also perform an instantaneous quenching of the Hamiltonian (with two Majorana modes at each end of the chain) to an another Hamiltonian which has only one Majorana mode in equilibrium; the MSP shows oscillations as a function of time with a noticeable decay in the amplitude. On the other hand for a quenching which is reverse to the previous one, the MSP decays rapidly and stays close to zero with fluctuations in amplitude.
We investigate the dynamics of a one-dimensional p-wave superconductor with next-nearest-neighbor hopping and superconducting interaction derived from a three-spin interacting Ising model in transverse field by mapping to Majorana fermions. The next-nearest-neighbor hopping term leads to a new topological phase containing two zero-energy Majorana modes at each end of an open chain, compared to a nearest-neighbor p-wave superconducting chain. We study the Majorana survival probability (MSP) of a particular Majorana edge state when the initial Hamiltonian (H_{i}) is changed to the quantum critical as well as off-critical final Hamiltonian (H_{f}), which additionally contains an impurity term (H_{imp}) that breaks the time-reversal invariance. For the off-critical quenching inside the new topological phase with H_{f}=H_{i}+H_{imp}, and small impurity strength (λ_{d}), we observe a perfect oscillation of the MSP as a function of time with a single frequency (determined by the impurity strength λ_{d}) that can be analyzed from an equivalent two-level problem. On the other hand, the MSP shows a beating like structure with time for quenching to the phase boundary separating the topological phase (with two edge Majoranas at each edge) and the nontopological phase where the additional frequency is given by inverse of the system size. We attribute this behavior of the MSP to the modification of the energy levels of the final Hamiltonian due to the application of the impurity term.
We study the adiabatic dynamics of Majorana fermions across a quantum phase transition. We show that the Kibble–Zurek scaling, which describes the density of bulk defects produced during the critical point crossing, is not valid for edge Majorana fermions. Therefore, the dynamics governing an edge state quench is nonuniversal and depends on the topological features of the system. Besides, we show that the localization of Majorana fermions is a necessary ingredient to guarantee robustness against defect production.
A degeneracy line in parameter space, at which the energy gap closes up, can be the boundary separating either two topological quantum phases or two conventional phases, depending on the surface containing the line. We study the topological feature of degeneracy line in parameter space via a dimerized Kitaev spin chain with staggered transverse field, which can be mapped onto the system of dimerized spinless fermions with ppp-wave superconductivity. The quantum phase boundaries are straight crossing degeneracy lines in three-dimensional (3D) parameter space. We show that the degeneracy line acts as a vortex filament associated with a vector field, which is generated from the Zak phase of the Bogoliubov--de Gennes band. We also investigate the topological invariant in Majorana fermion representation for open chains. The edge modes are not the zero mode but are still protected by the energy gap. The exact midgap states of the Majorana lattice allow us to obtain the corresponding Majorana probability distribution for the whole 3D parameter space, which can establish a scalar field to identify the topological feature of the degeneracy lines. Furthermore, when we switch on a weak tunneling between two ends of the Majorana lattice, the topological invariants of the degeneracy lines can be obtained by the pumped Majorana probability from an adiabatic passage encircling the lines. Numerical simulations of quasiadiabatic time evolution are performed in a small system. We compute the current to monitor the transport of the Majorana fermion, which exhibits an evident character of topological pumping. Our results link the bulk topological invariant to the dynamical behavior of the edge mode, extending the concept of bulk-edge correspondence.
In the sequence of quenches to either nontopological phases or other topological phases, we study the stability of Majorana fermions at the edges of a two-dimensional topological superconductor with spin-orbit coupling and in the presence of a Zeeman term. Both instantaneous and slow quenches are considered. In the case of instantaneous quenches, the Majorana modes generally decay, but for a finite system there is a revival time that scales to infinity as the system size grows. Exceptions to this decaying behavior are found in some cases due to the presence of edge states with the same momentum in the final state. Quenches to a topological Z(2) phase reveal some robustness of the Majorana fermions in the sense that even though the survival probability of the Majorana state is small, it does not vanish. If the pairing is not aligned with the spin-orbit Rashba coupling, it is found that the Majorana fermions are fairly robust with a finite survival probability. It is also shown that the Chern number remains invariant after the quench, until the propagation of the mode along the transverse direction reaches the middle point, beyond which the Chern number fluctuates between increasing values. The effect of varying the rate of change in slow quenches is also analyzed. It is found that the defect production is nonuniversal and does not follow the Kibble-Zurek scaling with the quench rate, as obtained before for other systems with topological edge states.
When a system is driven across a continuous phase transition, the density of topological defects demonstrates a power-law scaling behavior versus the quenching rate, as predicted by the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. In this study, we generalize this idea and address the scaling of quantum state transport in a one-dimensional topological system subject to a linear drive through its topological quantum phase transition point. We illustrate the power-law dependences of the quantum state's transport distance, width, and peak magnitude on the driving velocity. Crucially, the power-law exponents are distinct for the edge state and bulk state. Our results offer a different perspective on quantum state transfer and enrich the field of Kibble-Zurek behaviors and nonadiabatic quantum dynamics.