Minimal Zeeman field requirement for a topological transition in superconductors

Platforms for creating Majorana quasiparticles rely on superconductivity and breaking of time-reversal symmetry. By studying continuous deformations to known trivial states, we find that the relationship between superconducting pairing and time reversal breaking imposes rigorous bounds on the topolo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSciPost physics Vol. 10; no. 5; p. 108
Main Authors Pöyhönen, Kim, Varjas, Daniel, Wimmer, Michael, Akhmerov, Anton
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published SciPost 01.05.2021
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Summary:Platforms for creating Majorana quasiparticles rely on superconductivity and breaking of time-reversal symmetry. By studying continuous deformations to known trivial states, we find that the relationship between superconducting pairing and time reversal breaking imposes rigorous bounds on the topology of the system. Applying these bounds to s-wave systems with a Zeeman field, we conclude that a topological phase transition requires that the Zeeman energy at least locally exceed the superconducting pairing by the energy gap of the full Hamiltonian. Our results are independent of the geometry and dimensionality of the system.
ISSN:2542-4653
2542-4653
DOI:10.21468/SciPostPhys.10.5.108