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arXiv:1808.06947 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Exact ground states for interacting Kitaev chains

Jurriaan Wouters, Hosho Katsura, Dirk Schuricht

Published Oct 10, 2018• 29 citations
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Abstract

We introduce a frustration-free, one-dimensional model of spinless fermions with hopping, $p$-wave superconducting pairing and alternating chemical potentials. The model possesses two exactly degenerate ground states even for finite system sizes. We present analytical results for the strong Majorana zero modes, the phase diagram, and the topological order. Furthermore, we generalize our results to include interactions.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.98.155119

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We introduce a frustration-free, one-dimensional model of spinless fermions with hopping, ppp-wave superconducting pairing and alternating chemical potentials. The model possesses two exactly degenerate ground states even for finite system sizes. We present analytical results for the strong Majorana zero modes, the phase diagram, and the topological order. Furthermore, we generalize our results to include interactions.
We study a system of interacting spinless fermions in one dimension that, in the absence of interactions, reduces to the Kitaev chain [Kitaev, Phys. Usp. 44, 131 (2001)]. In the noninteracting case, a signal of topological order appears as zero-energy modes localized near the edges. We show that the exact ground states can be obtained analytically even in the presence of nearest-neighbor repulsive interactions when the on-site (chemical) potential is tuned to a particular function of the other parameters. As with the noninteracting case, the obtained ground states are twofold degenerate and differ in fermionic parity. We prove the uniqueness of the obtained ground states and show that they can be continuously deformed to the ground states of the noninteracting Kitaev chain without gap closing. We also demonstrate explicitly that there exists a set of operators each of which maps one of the ground states to the other with opposite fermionic parity. These operators can be thought of as an interacting generalization of Majorana edge zero modes.
Lattice models with supersymmetry are known to exhibit a variety of remarkable properties that do not exist in the relativistic models. In this paper, we introduce an interacting generalization of the Kitaev chain of Majorana fermions with N=1\mathcal{N}=1N=1 supersymmetry and investigate its low-energy properties, paying particular attention to the ground-state degeneracy and low-lying fermionic excitations. First, we establish the existence of a phase with spontaneously broken supersymmetry and a phase transition out of it with the help of variational arguments and the exact ground state. We then develop, based on the superfield formalism, a simple mean-field theory, in which the order parameters detect supersymmetry breaking, to understand the ground-state phases and low-lying Nambu-Goldstone fermions. At the solvable point (frustration-free point), the exact ground state of an open chain exhibits large degeneracy of the order of the system size, which is attributed to the existence of a zero-energy domain wall (dubbed kink or skink) separating the topological and trivial states of Majorana fermions. Our results may shed new light on the intriguing ground-state properties of supersymmetric lattice models.
Interacting Kitaev Chain with N=1\mathcal{N}=1N=1 Supersymmetry
Lattice models with supersymmetry are known to exhibit a variety of remarkable properties that do not exist in the relativistic models. In this paper, we introduce an interacting generalization of the Kitaev chain of Majorana fermions with N=1\mathcal{N} = 1N=1 supersymmetry and investigate its low-energy properties, paying particular attention to the ground-state degeneracy and low-lying fermionic excitations. First, we establish the existence of a phase with spontaneously broken supersymmetry and a phase transition out of it with the help of variational arguments and the exact ground state. We then develop, based on the superfield formalism, a simple mean-field theory, in which the order parameters detect supersymmetry-breaking, to understand the ground-state phases and low-lying Nambu-Goldstone fermions. At the solvable point ({\em frustration-free point}), the exact ground state of an open chain exhibits large degeneracy of the order of the system size, which is attributed to the existence of a zero-energy domain wall (dubbed kink or skink) separating the topological and trivial states of Majorana fermions. Our results may shed new light on the intriguing ground-state properties of supersymmetric lattice models.
The one-dimensional interacting Kitaev chain at half filling is studied. The symmetry of the Hamiltonian is examined by dual transformations, and various physical quantities as a function of the fermion-fermion interaction U are calculated systematically using the density matrix renormalization group method. A special value of interaction U p is revealed in the topological region of the phase diagram. We show that at U p the ground states are strictly two-fold degenerate even though the chain length is finite and the zero-energy peak due to the Majorana zero modes is maximally enhanced and exactly localized at the end sites. Here U p may be attractive or repulsive depending on other system parameters. We also give a qualitative understanding of the effect of interaction under the self-consistent mean field framework.
The fermionic and bosonic zero modes of the one-dimensional (1D) interacting Kitaev chain at the symmetric point are unveiled. The many-body structures of the Majorana zero modes in the topological region are given explicitly by carrying out a perturbation expansion up to infinite order. We also give the analytic expressions of the bosonic zero modes in the topologically trivial phase. Our results are generalized to the hybrid fermion system comprised of the interacting Kitaev model and the Su–Schrieffer–Heeger (SSH) model, in which we show that these two types of zero modes can coexist in a certain region of its phase diagram.
We analyze a spin-1/21/21/2 chain with two-spin interactions which are shown to be exactly solvable by Lieb, Schultz, and Mattis [Ann. Phys. 16, 407 (1961)]. We show that the model can be viewed as a generalized Kitaev model that is analytically solvable for all defect sectors. We present an alternate proof that the defect-free sector is the ground state, which is valid for a larger parameter range. We show that the defect sectors have degenerate ground states corresponding to unpaired Majorana fermion modes and that the degeneracy is topologically protected against disorder in the spin-spin couplings. The unpaired Majorana fermions can be manipulated by tuning the model parameters and can hence be used for topological quantum computation.