We study the one-dimensional Kitaev chain with long-range superconductive pairing terms at a finite temperature where the system is prepared in a mixed state in equilibrium with a heat reservoir maintained at a constant temperature $T$. In order to probe the footprint of the ground-state topological behavior of the model at finite temperature, we look at two global quantities extracted out of two geometrical constructions: the Uhlmann and the interferometric phase. Interestingly, when the long-range effect dominates, the Uhlmann phase approach fails to reproduce the topological aspects of the model in the pure-state limit; on the other hand, the interferometric phase which has a proper pure state reduction, shows a behavior independent of the ambient temperature.
We study the one-dimensional Kitaev chain with long-range superconductive pairing terms at a finite temperature where the system is prepared in a mixed state in equilibrium with a heat reservoir maintained at a constant temperature T. In order to probe the footprint of the ground-state topological behavior of the model at finite temperature, we look at two global quantities extracted out of two geometrical constructions: the Uhlmann and the interferometric phase. Interestingly, when the long-range effect dominates, the Uhlmann phase approach fails to reproduce the topological aspects of the model in the pure-state limit; on the other hand, the interferometric phase which has a proper pure state reduction, shows a behavior independent of the ambient temperature.
We study a one-dimensional Kitaev model with uniform phase gradient pairing term. We show that the gradient constant significantly affects the phase diagram, which consists of topologically trivial and nontrivial phases, associated with Majorana edge modes. Based on the exact solution, a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-pair order parameter is introduced to characterize the phase diagram by its value and nonanalytic behavior at phase boundaries. We find that this order parameter obtains its maxima at the triple critical points, at which the pairing phase gradient suppresses the single-particle scattering process due to the coherent destructive interference. In particular, we show that the ground state at such a point possesses exact off-diagonal long-range order (ODLRO), in the thermodynamic limit. Our result provides an example of a gapless p-wave superconducting ground state possessing ODLRO.
Abstract We study the extended Kitaev chain with both nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor hopping terms and find the model system exhibiting nontrivial phases, which can be characterized by a nonzero Berry phase and winding number when the system is in a pure state. While in a mixed state, we investigate the robustness of the topological Uhlmann phases and show how it responses to the presence of next-nearest-neighbor hopping terms. Furthermore, we analyse the complicated behavior of the Uhlmann phase of the extended Kitaev chain at finite temperature as k moves along the Brillouin zone, and we think this may serve as a topological indicator for mixed states in condensed matter systems.
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.
The growing field of topological orders has been extensively studied both form the communities of condensed matter and quantum simulation. However, very little is known about the fate of topological order in the presence of disturbing effects such as external noise or dissipation. In the first part of this thesis, we start by studying how the edge states of a topological insulator become unstable when interacting with thermal baths. Motivated by these results, we generalise the notion of Chern insulators from the well-known Hamiltonian case to Liouvillian dynamics. We achieve this goal by defining a new topological witness that is still related to the quantum Hall conductivity at finite temperature. The mixed character of edge states is also well captured by our formalism, and explicit models for topological insulators and dissipative channels are considered. Additionally, we find new topological phases that remain quantised at finite temperature. The construction is based on the Uhlmann phase, a geometric quantum phase defined for general density matrices. Using this new tool, we are able to characterise topological insulators and superconductors at finite temperature both in one and two spatial dimensions. From the experimental side, we propose a state-independent protocol to measure the topological Uhlmann phase in the context of quantum simulation. Symmetry-protected topological orders have traditionally emerged from shortrange interactions. It remains very much unknown what the role played by longrange interactions is, within the physics of these topological systems. In the second part of this thesis, we analyse how topological superconducting phases are affected by the inclusion of long-range couplings. Remarkably, we unveil new topological quasi-particles due to long-range interactions, that were absent in short-range models. We also study how topological invariants are modified by the presence of long-range effects. In the appendix section of the thesis, we explore new numerical methods for driven-dissipative phase transitions. We consider quantum systems with a dissipative term driving the system into a non-equilibrium steady state. The inclusion of short-range fluctuations out-of-equilibrium deeply modifies the shape of the phase-diagram, something never observed in equilibrium thermodynamics.
For a long time, it was believed that the Ginzburg-Landau formalism was able to classify all different types of phase transitions. This view changed with the discovery of the quantum Hall effect and topological insulators. Topological insulators (superconductors) are materials that host symmetry-protected metallic edge states in an insulating (superconducting) bulk. Although topological insulators are well understood by now, a thermodynamic description of their behavior remained elusive, firstly because the edges are lost in the thermodynamic limit, when the system size goes to infinity, and secondly because topological quantum field theories involve non-local order parameters, and hence cannot be captured by the conventional Ginzburg-Landau formalism. Recently, this challenge has been overcome: by using Hill thermodynamics to describe the paradigmatic Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang model in two dimensions, it has been shown that at the topological phase change the thermodynamic potential does not scale extensively due to the boundary effects.\n\nHere, we extend this thermodynamic approach firstly to the Kitaev chain in one-dimension and then to different topological models in various dimensions (the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model in one dimension, the Kane-Mele model in two dimensions and the Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang model in three dimensions) at zero temperature. Surprisingly, we find that all these models exhibit the same universal behavior in the order of the topological-phase transition, which depends on the dimensionality of the system. Next, we use this thermodynamic approach to describe topological phases at finite-temperatures. We calculate the entropy and heat capacity for the Kitaev chain and verify its behavior in comparison with conformal field theory. Furthermore, we extend the topological phase transition to finite-temperatures, by numerically deriving the topological phase diagram for the bulk of the system, and show that it displays a good agreement with the one calculated analytically from the Uhlmann phase. Finally, we calculate measurable quantities such as the density of states and the heat capacity for different topological insulators. Our work reveals unexpected universalities and opens the path to a thermodynamic description of systems with a non-local order parameter, provided that nonlinear terms are appropriately taken into account for the thermodynamic extensive variables.
We study the behavior of the Uhlmann connection in systems of fermions undergoing phase transitions. In particular, we analyze some of the paradigmatic cases of topological insulators and superconductors in one dimension, as well as the BCS theory of superconductivity in three dimensions. We show that the Uhlmann connection signals phase transitions in which the eigenbasis of the state of the system changes. Moreover, using the established fidelity approach and the study of the edge states, we show the absence of thermally driven phase transitions in the case of topological insulators and superconductors. We clarify what is the relevant parameter space associated with the Uhlmann connection so that it signals the existence of order in mixed states. In addition, the study of Majorana modes at finite temperature opens the possibility of applications in realistic stable quantum memories. Finally, the analysis of the different behavior of the BCS model and the Kitaev chain, with respect to the Uhlmann connection, suggested that in realistic scenarios the gap of topological superconductors could also, generically, be temperature dependent.