By decreasing the transversal confinement potential in interacting quantum wires and populating the second energetically lowest sub-band, electron systems transition into a quasi-one-dimensional state with dominant superconducting correlations and one gapless mode. By combining effective field theory approach and numerical density matrix renormalization group simulations we show that this quasi-one-dimensional state is a topological state that hosts Majorana edge modes. We also study the single-particle correlations across the interface between this quasi-one-dimensional and single-channel states.
By decreasing the transversal confinement potential in interacting quantum wires and populating the second energetically lowest sub-band, electron systems transition into a quasi-one-dimensional state with dominant superconducting correlations and one gapless mode. By combining effective field theory approach and numerical density matrix renormalization group simulations we show that this quasi-one-dimensional state is a topological state that hosts Majorana edge modes. We also study the single-particle correlations across the interface between this quasi-one-dimensional and single-channel states.
By decreasing the transversal confinement potential in interacting one-dimensional spinless electrons and populating the second energetically lowest subband for not too strong interactions system transitions into a quasi-one-dimensional state with dominant superconducting correlations and one gapless mode. By combining effective field theory approach and numerical density matrix renormalization group simulations, we show that this quasi-one-dimensional state is a topological state that hosts zero-energy edge modes. We also study the single-particle correlations across the interface between these quasi-one-dimensional and single-channel states.
We investigate the topological phases of two one-dimensional (1D) interacting superconducting wires and propose topological markers directly measurable from ground-state correlation functions. These quantities remain powerful tools in the presence of couplings and interactions. We show with the density matrix renormalization group that the double critical Ising (DCI) phase of two interacting Kitaev chains is a fractional topological phase with gapless Majorana modes in the bulk, and a one-half topological invariant per wire. Using both numerics and quantum field theoretical methods, we show that the phase diagram remains stable in the presence of an interwire hopping amplitude ${t}_{\ensuremath{\perp}}$ at length scales below $\ensuremath{\sim}1/{t}_{\ensuremath{\perp}}$. A large interwire hopping amplitude results in the emergence of two integer topological phases, stable also at large interactions. They host one edge mode per boundary shared between both wires. At large interactions, the two wires are described by Mott physics, with the ${t}_{\ensuremath{\perp}}$ hopping amplitude resulting in a paramagnetic order.
Upon increasing the electron density in a quantum wire, the one-dimensional electron system undergoes a transition to a quasi-one-dimensional state. In the absence of interactions between electrons, this corresponds to filling up the second subband of transverse quantization, and there are two gapless excitation modes above the transition. On the other hand, strongly interacting one-dimensional electrons form a Wigner crystal, and the transition corresponds to it splitting into two chains (zigzag crystal). We show that the soft mode driving the transition to the zigzag state is gapped, and only one gapless mode exists above the transition. Furthermore, we establish that in the vicinity of the transition already arbitrarily weak interactions open a gap in the second mode. We then argue that only one gapless mode exists near the transition at any interaction strength.
We study the condition for a topological superconductor (TS) phase with edge Majorana fermions to appear when a quasiperiodic lattice modulation is applied to a one-dimensional quantum wire with strong spin-orbit interaction situated under a magnetic field and in proximity to a superconductor. By density-matrix renormalization group analysis we find that multiple topological phases with Majorana edge modes are realized in finite ranges of the filling factor, showing a sequence of reentrant transitions. An on-site interaction stabilizes the topological phases, as observed for systems without lattice modulation in [E. M. Stoudenmire, J. Alicea, O. A. Starykh, and M. P. A. Fisher, Phys. Rev. B 84, 014503 (2011)]. The stability of the TS in the presence of a harmonic trap potential is also discussed.
Topological superconductors are believed to host exotic quasiparticle excitations known as Majorana zero modes (MZMs), with much of the evidence based on BCS mean-field theory. The direct application of mean-field arguments is tenuous in finite, isolated systems relevant in some experiments. Here, we develop a new correlation-based method for identifying MZMs in interacting, number-conserving systems. Using the density matrix renormalization group, we study fermion number-conserving models with long-range interactions, which under periodic boundary conditions exhibit robust topological and nontopological superconductivity, tuned by the strength of interaction [Ortiz et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 267002 (2014)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.113.267002]. We find evidence that, on the topological side, Majorana edge modes appear in open chains, manifesting as the vanishing of the energy splitting between odd- and even-parity ground states with increasing system size. Additionally, off-diagonal two-point correlation functions show nonlocal, parity-dependent edge effects. These correlations reveal the spatial structure of Majorana modes in the many-body wave function. We show that the correlation diagnostic applies broadly, including to short-range interacting models, where topological superconductivity is more fragile due to the absence of a bulk excitation gap.
Majorana zero modes (MZM-s) occurring at the edges of a one-dimensional (1D), p-wave, spinless superconductor, in the absence of fluctuations of the phase of the superconducting order parameter, are quintessential examples of topologically protected zero-energy modes occurring at the edges of 1D symmetry-protected topological phases. In this work, we numerically investigate the fate of the topological phase in the presence of phase fluctuations using the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) technique. To that end, we consider a one-dimensional array of MZM-s on mesoscopic superconducting islands at zero temperature. Cooper-pair and MZM-assisted single-electron tunneling, together with finite charging energy of the mesoscopic islands, give rise to a rich phase diagram of this model. We show that the system can be in either a Mott-insulating phase, a Luttinger liquid (LL) phase of Cooper pairs, or a second gapless phase. In contrast to the LL of Cooper pairs, this second phase is characterized by nonlocal string correlation functions which decay algebraically due to gapless charge-e excitations. The three phases are separated from each other by phase transitions of either Kosterlitz-Thouless or Ising type. Using a Jordan-Wigner transformation, we map the system to a generalized Bose-Hubbard model with two types of hopping and use DMRG to analyze the different phases and the phase transitions.