Nontopological nature of the edge current in a chiral p -wave superconductor

The edges of time-reversal symmetry breaking topological superconductors support chiral Majorana bound states as well as spontaneous charge currents. The Majorana modes are a robust, topological property, but the charge currents are nontopological-and therefore sensitive to microscopic details-even...

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Veröffentlicht in:Physical review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics Condensed matter and materials physics, 2015-03, Vol.91 (9), Article 094507
Hauptverfasser: Huang, Wen, Lederer, Samuel, Taylor, Edward, Kallin, Catherine
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:The edges of time-reversal symmetry breaking topological superconductors support chiral Majorana bound states as well as spontaneous charge currents. The Majorana modes are a robust, topological property, but the charge currents are nontopological-and therefore sensitive to microscopic details-even if we neglect Meissner screening. We give insight into the nontopological nature of edge currents in chiral p-wave superconductors using a variety of theoretical techniques, including lattice Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations, the quasiclassical approximation, and the gradient expansion, and we describe those special cases in which edge currents do have a topological character. While edge currents are not quantized, they are generically large, but they can be substantially reduced for a sufficiently anisotropic gap function, a scenario of possible relevance for the putative chiral p-wave superconductor Sr sub(2) RuO sub(4).
ISSN:1098-0121
1550-235X
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.91.094507