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arXiv:2502.06569

Floquet-Engineered Hybrid Topological Orders with Majorana Edge Modes in Number-Conserving Fermionic Quantum Simulators

Zhi Lin, Song, Qi, Yue, Sheng, Ming Yang, Jie Lou, Yan Chen

Published Feb 10, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We develop an experimental protocol based on Floquet-engineered ultracold fermions in optical lattices, enabling the emulation of pair-hopping and competing singlet/triplet pairing interactions. Through large-scale density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) simulations, we uncover three emergent topological phases: (i) A Majorana-enabled spin-density-wave (MS) phase featuring exponentially localized edge charges, non-local fermionic edge correlations, and doubly degenerate entanglement spectra; (ii) A z-axis polarized triplet superconducting (TS) phase exhibiting fractionalized edge spins (S=1/4 per edge), two-fold ground state degeneracy and a bulk single-particle gap; (iii) A hybrid x-directional triplet superconducting (XTS) phase that uniquely combines fractional spin textures and Majorana-type edge correlations, defining a new universality class of hybrid orders in number-conserving systems. These findings establish a universal framework for engineering non-Abelian topological matter, crucially bypassing the need for external pairing fields while maintaining experimental feasibility with current cold-atom techniques.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2502.06569

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We develop an experimental protocol based on Floquet-engineered ultracold fermions in optical lattices, enabling the emulation of pair-hopping and competing singlet/triplet pairing interactions. Through large-scale density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) simulations, we uncover three emergent topological phases: (i) A Majorana-enabled spin-density-wave (MS) phase featuring exponentially localized edge charges, non-local fermionic edge correlations, and doubly degenerate entanglement spectra; (ii) A z-axis polarized triplet superconducting (TS) phase exhibiting fractionalized edge spins (S=1/4 per edge), two-fold ground state degeneracy and a bulk single-particle gap; (iii) A hybrid x-directional triplet superconducting (XTS) phase that uniquely combines fractional spin textures and Majorana-type edge correlations, defining a new universality class of hybrid orders in number-conserving systems. These findings establish a universal framework for engineering non-Abelian topological matter, crucially bypassing the need for external pairing fields while maintaining experimental feasibility with current cold-atom techniques.
Abstract One-dimensional (1D) Floquet topological superconductors possess two types of degenerate Majorana edge modes at zero andπquasienergies, leaving more room for the design of boundary time crystals and quantum computing schemes than their static counterparts. In this work, we discover Floquet superconducting phases with large topological invariants and arbitrarily many Majorana edge modes in periodically driven Kitaev chains (KCs). Topological winding numbers defined for the Floquet operator and Floquet entanglement Hamiltonian are found to generate consistent predictions about the phase diagram, bulk-edge correspondence and numbers of zero andπMajorana edge modes of the system under different driving protocols. The bipartite entanglement entropy further shows non-analytic behaviors around the topological transition point between different Floquet superconducting phases. These general features are demonstrated by investigating the KC with periodically kicked pairing or hopping amplitudes. Our discovery reveals the rich topological phases and many Majorana edge modes that could be brought about by periodic driving fields in 1D superconducting systems. It further introduces a unified description for a class of Floquet topological superconductors from their quasienergy bands and entanglement properties.
Recent studies in the realization of Majorana fermion (MF) quasiparticles have focused on engineering topological superconductivity that derives from proximity effects of conventional superconductors and spin textures. We propose an effective model to create unpaired MFs at a honeycomb lattice edge by generalizing a two-dimensional topologically nontrivial Haldane model and introducing textured pairings. The core idea is to add both the spin-singlet and textured spin-triplet pairings to a pseudospin-state-dependent, time-reversal-symmetry (TRS) noninvariant honeycomb lattice, and to satisfy generalized ``sweet spot'' conditions as in the Kitaev chain model. Our model has a gapped superconducting phase and a gapless phase; either phase may have zero or nonzero topological winding numbers. The discriminant that distinguishes those two phases gives a measure of TRS breaking and may have more general implications. Effective Majorana zero modes arise at edges in distinct phases with different degrees of degeneracy. Our theoretical model motivates concepts, such as ``textured pairings'' and the ``strength'' of TRS breaking, that may play important roles in future implementation of MFs with cold atoms in optical lattices.
We construct a protocol to adiabatically prepare the ground state of a widely discussed number-conserving model Hamiltonian for ultracold atoms in optical lattices that supports Majorana edge states. In particular, we introduce a symmetry breaking mass term that amounts to threading a commensurate (artificial) magnetic flux through the plaquettes of the considered two-leg ladder which opens a constant bulk gap. This enables the preparation of the topological Majorana phase from a trivial Mott insulator state with optimal asymptotic scaling of the ramp time in system size, which is linear owing to the critical nature of the target state. Using constructive bosonization techniques that account for both finite size effects and global fermion number conservation, we are able to fully explain with theory the somewhat counterintuitive necessity of the aforementioned commensurate flux for a controlled bulk gap. Our analytical predictions are corroborated and quantified by unbiased numerical matrix product states (MPS) simulations. Directly building up on previous experimental work, the crucial flux-term of the proposed protocol is feasible with state-of-the-art experimental techniques in atomic quantum simulators.
In this Letter we present, in a number conserving framework, a model of interacting fermions in a two-wire geometry supporting nonlocal zero-energy Majorana-like edge excitations. The model has an exactly solvable line, on varying the density of fermions, described by a topologically nontrivial ground state wave function. Away from the exactly solvable line we study the system by means of the numerical density matrix renormalization group. We characterize its topological properties through the explicit calculation of a degenerate entanglement spectrum and of the braiding operators which are exponentially localized at the edges. Furthermore, we establish the presence of a gap in its single particle spectrum while the Hamiltonian is gapless, and compute the correlations between the edge modes as well as the superfluid correlations. The topological phase covers a sizable portion of the phase diagram, the solvable line being one of its boundaries.
Abstract We explore the topological phase, which involves Majorana type topological zero mode fermions (MTZFs) at the edge, using d–wave superfluid with Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) interactions. The self-Hermitian of this MTZF( γ†(k)=γ(k){{\boldsymbol{\gamma }}}^{{\boldsymbol{\dagger }}}{\boldsymbol{(}}{\bf{k}}{\boldsymbol{)}}{\boldsymbol{=}}{\boldsymbol{\gamma }}{\boldsymbol{(}}{\bf{k}}{\boldsymbol{)}}γ†(k)=γ(k) γ † ( k ) = γ ( k ) ) is similar to that of the Majorana fermions (MFs) ( γ†=γ{{\boldsymbol{\gamma }}}^{{\boldsymbol{\dagger }}}={\boldsymbol{\gamma }}γ†=γ γ † = γ ). We show that, to realize a single MTZF at each edge in superfluid with d–wave pairing in a Majorana type Kramers Doublet (MTKD) state, it is important to lift both the spin and the Dirac Cones degeneracies. These non-Abelian anyons obey the non-Abelian statistics which may be useful to realize topological quantum computation. We suggest that the topological feature could be tested experimentally in superfluids of cold fermionic atoms with laser field induced spin orbit interactions. These studies give a new possible way to investigate the MTZFs in a two-dimensional (2D) system as compared to MFs in the one-dimensional (1D) nano-wire and 2D system, and enrich the theoretical research on finding non-Abelian anyons in topological system.
We propose a scheme to implement Kitaev's honeycomb model with cold atoms, based on a periodic (Floquet) drive, in view of realizing and probing non-Abelian chiral spin liquids using quantum simulators.We derive the effective Hamiltonian to leading order in the inverse-frequency expansion, and show that the drive opens up a topological gap in the spectrum without mixing the effective Majorana and vortex degrees of freedom.We address the challenge of probing the physics of Majorana fermions, while having access only to the original composite spin degrees of freedom.Specifically, we propose to detect the properties of the chiral spin liquid phase using gap spectroscopy and edge quenches in the presence of the Floquet drive.The resulting chiral edge signal, which relates to the thermal Hall effect associated with neutral Majorana currents, is found to be robust for realistically prepared states.By combining strong interactions with Floquet engineering, our work paves the way for future studies of non-Abelian excitations and quantized thermal transport using quantum simulators.