Magnetic manipulation of topological states in p-wave superconductors

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articleResearchpeer-review

  • Maria Teresa Mercaldo
  • Mario Cuoco
  • Panagiotis Kotetes

Substantial experimental investigation has provided evidence for spin-triplet pairing in diverse classes of materials and in a variety of artificial heterostructures. One of the fundamental challenges in this framework is how to manipulate the topological behavior of p-wave superconductors (PSC). In this work we investigate the magnetic field response of one-dimensional (1d) PSCs and we focus on the relation between the structure of the Cooper pair spin-configuration and the occurrence of topological phases with an enhanced number N of Majorana fermions per edge. The topological phase diagram, consisting of phases harboring Majorana modes, becomes significantly modified when one tunes the strength of the applied field, the direction of the d-vector and allows for long range hopping amplitudes in the 1d PSC. We find transitions between phases with different number N of Majorana fermions per edge and we show how they can be both induced by a variation of the hopping strength and a spin rotation of d.

Original languageEnglish
JournalPhysica B: Condensed Matter
Volume536
Pages (from-to)730-733
Number of pages4
ISSN0921-4526
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Bibliographical note

[Qdev]

    Research areas

  • Magnetic effects, P-wave superconductors, Topological phases

ID: 196204423