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arXiv:2103.12281 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Coexistence of strong and weak Majorana zero modes in an anisotropic XY spin chain with second-neighbor interactions

Kazuhiro Wada, Takanori Sugimoto, Takami Tohyama

Published Aug 12, 2021• 13 citations
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Abstract

We theoretically investigate Majorana zero modes emerging in an anisotropic XY spin chain with second-neighbor interactions. The spin chain is mathematically equivalent to the Kitaev chain comprised of spinless fermions if only nearest-neighbor interactions are considered. Recent studies on the Kitaev chain with long-ranged interactions, have presented coexistence of several Majorana zero modes. Investigating the topological phase diagram of the anisotropic XY spin chain with second-neighbor interactions, we find coexistence of several Majorana zero modes similar to the Kitaev chain. However, we confirm that one of the zero modes is restricted into a Hilbert subspace. The mode is regarded as a so-called weak zero mode that should exhibit thermodynamical properties different from a (strong) zero mode appearing in the whole Hilbert space. Since the quantum statistics of spin is the same as a hard-core boson, we expect an experimental realization of the weak mode in not only quantum spin materials but also optical lattices for cold atom systems.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.104.075119

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We theoretically investigate Majorana zero modes emerging in an anisotropic XY spin chain with second-neighbor interactions. The spin chain is mathematically equivalent to the Kitaev chain comprised of spinless fermions if only nearest-neighbor interactions are considered. Recent studies on the Kitaev chain with long-ranged interactions, have presented coexistence of several Majorana zero modes. Investigating the topological phase diagram of the anisotropic XY spin chain with second-neighbor interactions, we find coexistence of several Majorana zero modes similar to the Kitaev chain. However, we confirm that one of the zero modes is restricted into a Hilbert subspace. The mode is regarded as a so-called weak zero mode that should exhibit thermodynamical properties different from a (strong) zero mode appearing in the whole Hilbert space. Since the quantum statistics of spin is the same as a hard-core boson, we expect an experimental realization of the weak mode in not only quantum spin materials but also optical lattices for cold atom systems.
We study an exactly solvable one-dimensional spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ model which can support weak zero modes in its ground-state manifold. The spin chain has staggered XXZXXZXXZ-type and ZZZZZZ-type spin interaction on neighboring bonds and is thus dubbed the (XXZ,ZXXZ,ZXXZ,Z) chain. The model is equivalent to an interacting fermionic chain by Jordan-Wigner transformation. We study the phase diagram of the system and work out the conditions and properties of its weak zero modes. In the fermion chain representation, these weak zero modes are given by even-order polynomials of Majorana fermion operators and are thus bosonic. The fermionic chain Hamiltonian contains only fermion hopping and interaction terms and may have potential realization in experiments.
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 investigate the Bose-Hubbard chain in the presence of nearest-neighbor pairing. The pairing term gives rise to an unusual gapped Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ Ising phase that has number fluctuation but no off-diagonal long range order. This phase has a strongly correlated many-body doubly degenerate ground state which is effectively a gap-protected macroscopic qubit. In the strongly interacting limit, the system can be mapped onto an anisotropic transverse spin chain, which in turn can be mapped to the better-known fermionic sister of the paired Bose-Hubbard chain: the Kitaev chain which hosts zero-energy Majorana bound states. While corresponding phases in the fermionic and bosonic systems have starkly different wave functions, they share identical energy spectra. We describe a possible cold-atom realization of the paired Bose-Hubbard model in a biased zigzag optical lattice with reservoir-induced pairing, opening a possible route towards experimental Kitaev chain spectroscopy.
We investigate Majorana modes in a quantum spin chain with bond-dependent exchange interactions by studying its dynamics. Specifically, we consider two-time correlations for the anisotropic Kitaev-Heisenberg (KH) Hamiltonian close to the so-called Kitaev critical point. Here the model coincides with a phase boundary of two uncoupled instances of Kitaev's model for ppp-wave superconductors, together supporting a degenerate ground state characterized by multiple Majorana modes. In this regime, the real-time dynamics of local spins reveal a set of strong zero modes, corresponding to a set of protruding frequencies in the two-time correlation function. We derive perturbative interactions that map the KH spin chain onto the topological regime of Kitaev's fermionic model, thus opening up a bulk gap while retaining almost degenerate modes in the mesoscopic regime, i.e., for finite system sizes. This showcases the emergence of Majorana modes in a chain of effective dimers. Here, the binding energy within each unit cell competes with the interdimer coupling to generate a finite-size energy gap, in analogy with local energy terms in the transverse-field Ising model. These modes give rise to long coherence times of local spins located at the system edges. By breaking the local symmetry in each dimer, one can also observe a second class of Majorana modes in terms of a beating frequency in the two-time correlations function of the edge spin. Furthermore, we develop a scenario for realizing these model predictions in ion-trap quantum simulators with collective addressing of the ions.
A Spin 1/21/21/2 Fermions Chain with XYXYXY Interaction
We consider a chain of spinful fermions with nearest neighbor hopping in the presence of a XYXYXY antiferromagnetic interaction. The XYXYXY term is mapped onto a Kitaev chain at half-filling such that displays a bosonic zero mode topologically protected and long-range order. As the strength of the hopping amplitude is changed, the system undergoes a quantum phase transition from the topological non-trivial to the trivial phase. We apply the finite-size scaling method to determinate the phase diagram of the model.
Majorana bound states, with their non-Abelian properties, are candidates for the realization of fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here we study the influence of long-range many-body interactions on Majorana zero modes present in Kitaev chains. We show that these interactions can suppress the lifetime of the Majorana zero mode. We also discuss the role of long-range interactions on the Majorana state's spatial structure, and the overlap of the Majorana states localized at opposite ends of the chain. We have determined that increasing the interaction strength leads to decreasing of the stability of the Majorana modes. Moreover, we found out that interaction between particles located at more distant sites plays a more destructive role than the interaction between nearest neighbors.