We discover novel topological effects in the one-dimensional Kitaev chain modified by long-range Hamiltonian deformations in the hopping and pairing terms. This class of models display symmetry-protected topological order measured by the Berry/Zak phase of the lower-band eigenvector and the winding number of the Hamiltonians. For exponentially decaying hopping amplitudes, the topological sector can be significantly augmented as the penetration length increases, something experimentally achievable. For power-law decaying superconducting pairings, the massless Majorana modes at the edges get paired together into a massive nonlocal Dirac fermion localized at both edges of the chain: a new topological quasiparticle that we call topological massive Dirac fermion. This topological phase has fractional topological numbers as a consequence of the long-range couplings. Possible applications to current experimental setups and topological quantum computation are also discussed.
We discover novel topological effects in the one-dimensional Kitaev chain modified by long-range Hamiltonian deformations in the hopping and pairing terms. This class of models display symmetry-protected topological order measured by the Berry/Zak phase of the lower-band eigenvector and the winding number of the Hamiltonians. For exponentially decaying hopping amplitudes, the topological sector can be significantly augmented as the penetration length increases, something experimentally achievable. For power-law decaying superconducting pairings, the massless Majorana modes at the edges get paired together into a massive nonlocal Dirac fermion localized at both edges of the chain: a new topological quasiparticle that we call topological massive Dirac fermion. This topological phase has fractional topological numbers as a consequence of the long-range couplings. Possible applications to current experimental setups and topological quantum computation are also discussed.
In this paper, we have considered the extended version of the Kitaev model in one dimension, i.e., a long-range p-wave superconducting wire. In the long-range Kitaev chain, the superconducting hopping and pairing terms in the Hamiltonian decay, independently, in a power-law fashion , where l is the distance between the two sites and x is some positive constant. We have studied the appearance of Majorana zero-energy edge modes and also, massive Dirac edge modes by exact diagonalization, as well as analytical computations. Exact diagonalization indicates the existence of both kinds of massless and massive edge modes in the energy spectrum. Furthermore, we obtain the phase diagram and the topological phase transitions by calculating the winding number, which is the topological invariant.
We present a detailed study of the topological properties of the Kitaev chain with long-range pairing terms and in the presence of an Aubry-André-Harper on-site potential.Specifically, we consider algebraically decaying superconducting pairing amplitudes; the exponent of this decay is found to determine a critical pairing strength, below which the chain remains topologically trivial.Above the critical pairing, topological edge modes are observed in the central gap.For sufficiently fast decay of the pairing, these modes are identified as Majorana zero modes.However, if the pairing term decays slowly, the modes become massive Dirac modes.Interestingly, these massive modes still exhibit a true level crossing at zero energy, which points towards an intimate relation to Majorana physics.We also observe a clear lack of bulk-boundary correspondence in the long-range system, where bulk topological invariants remain constant, while dramatic changes appear in the behavior at the edge of the system.In addition to the central gap around zero energy, the Aubry-André-Harper potential also leads to other energy gaps at nonzero energy.As for the analogous short-range model, the edge modes in these gaps can be characterized through a 2D Chern invariant.However, in contrast to the short-range model, this topological invariant does not correspond to the number of edge mode crossings anymore.This provides another example of the weakening of the bulk-boundary correspondence occurring in this model.Finally, we discuss possible realizations of the model with ultracold atoms and condensed matter systems.
In one-dimensional p-wave superconductors with short-range interactions, topologically protected Majorana modes emerge, whose mass decays exponentially with system size, as first shown by Kitaev. In this Letter, we extend this prototypical model by including power law long-range interactions within a self-consistent framework, leading to the self-consistent long-range Kitaev chain (seco-LRKC). In this model, the gap matrix acquires a rich structure where short-range superconducting correlations coexist with long-range correlations that are exponentially localized at both chain edges simultaneously. As a direct consequence, the topological edge modes hybridize even if their wave function overlap vanishes, and the edge mode mass inherits the asymptotic scaling of the interaction. In contrast to models with imposed power law pairing, where massive Dirac modes emerge for exponents x^2
We study the combined effects of disorder and range of the couplings on the phase diagram of one-dimensional topological superconductors. We consider an extended version of the Kitaev chain where hopping and pairing terms couple many sites. Deriving the conditions for the existence of Majorana zero modes, we show that either the range and the on-site disorder can greatly enhance the topological phases characterized by the appearance of one or many Majorana modes localized at the edges. We consider both a discrete and a continuous disorder distribution. Moreover, we discuss the role of correlated disorder which might further widen the topological regions. Finally, we show that in the purely long-range regime and in the presence of disorder, the spatial decay of the edge modes remains either algebraic or exponential, with eventually a modified localization length, as in the absence of disorder.
The power-law profile of hopping and superconductivity introduces rich critical phenomena that are not possible to explore in the nearest-neighbor models. Having this in mind, we construct the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH)-Kitaev model with mono-, bi-, and tri-partite sub-lattices where superconductivity [hopping] is of power-law Kitaev [SSH] type. The long-range (LR) superconductivity can alone gap out the zero-momentum critical line while LR hopping alters the finite-momentum critical line. There exists open-ended critical line at vanishing superconducting gap on the phase diagram for all versions of the SSH-Kitaev model. Interestingly, LR superconductivity (hopping) promotes massive Dirac (Majorana zero) modes, while in a finite-size system, their emergence in open boundary conditions is caused by the bulk gap of the anti-periodic Hamiltonian in momentum space. This indicates an unconventional bulk-boundary correspondence for power-law models as compared to what is seen in the short-range models. Importantly, the thermodynamic phase boundaries are correctly reproduced by the above unconventional correspondence. Intriguingly, an even (odd) number of sub-lattices yields an integer (half-integer) winding number while the massive Dirac modes continue to survive irrespective of the sub-lattice profile as long as there exists LR pairing only.
The topological properties of the Kitaev chain model with extended-range interactions are investigated, focusing on cases where the topological winding number is preserved. We assume that the pairing and hopping terms decay algebraically in space with exponents α and β, respectively. We show that in the truncated-range scenario, there are as many distinct topological phases as the number of coupled neighboring sites. In addition, an explicit analytical formulation is provided to evaluate the topological invariant and the phase transitions that emerge in these systems. Besides the analytical description, we introduce a new physical insight into the topological excitations of the ground-state by measuring the spatial distribution of the edge modes with the Majorana average position. Taking the next-nearest neighbor Kitaev chains as a probe, various numerical calculations of Majorana edge states were performed in finite-size clusters to determine the sensitivity of the topological zero energy modes to the parameters of interest. The occupation of edge-to-edge non-local fermion states is computed and defined as an effective parity. Such an effective parity exhibits new interesting features beyond the energetic exchange from the ground-state fermion parity switches, which are related to the distribution of the respective edge modes. Our calculations show a direct correlation between the ground-state fermion parity and the edge occupation numbers, which are translated into localization and delocalization of the Majorana average position.