Published July 18, 2024 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Real-space topological invariant for time-quasiperiodic Majorana modes

  • 1. ROR icon Cornell University
  • 2. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 3. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 4. ROR icon California State University, Northridge

Abstract

When subjected to quasiperiodic driving protocols, superconducting systems have been found to harbor robust time-quasiperiodic Majorana modes, extending the concept beyond static and Floquet systems. However, the presence of incommensurate driving frequencies results in dense energy spectra, rendering conventional methods of defining topological invariants based on band structure inadequate. In this work, we introduce a real-space topological invariant capable of identifying time-quasiperiodic Majorana modes by leveraging the system's spectral localizer, which integrates information from both Hamiltonian and position operators. Drawing insights from non-Hermitian physics, we establish criteria for constructing the localizer and elucidate the robustness of this invariant in the presence of dense spectra. Our numerical simulations, focusing on a Kitaev chain driven by two incommensurate frequencies, validate the efficacy of our approach.

Copyright and License

©2024 American Physical Society

Copyright and License

This work is supported by NSF PREP Grant No. PHY-2216774. G.R. is grateful for support from AFOSR MURI Grant No. FA9550-22-1-0339, as well as the Simons Foundation and the Institute of Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Frontier Center with partial support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

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PhysRevB.110.014309.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

ISSN
2469-9969

Funding

National Science Foundation
PHY-2216774
United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research
FA9550-22-1-0339
Simons Foundation
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

Dates

Accepted
2024-07-01
Accepted

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Institute for Quantum Information and Matter
Publication Status
Published