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Published September 15, 2017 | Submitted + Published + Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Sensing Floquet-Majorana fermions via heat transfer

Abstract

Time periodic modulations of the transverse field in the closed XY spin-1/2 chain generate a very rich dynamical phase diagram, with a hierarchy of Z_n topological phases characterized by differing numbers of Floquet-Majorana modes. This rich phase diagram survives when the system is coupled to dissipative end reservoirs. Circumventing the obstacle of preparing and measuring quasienergy configurations endemic to Floquet-Majorana detection schemes, we show that stroboscopic heat transport and spin density are robust observables to detect both the dynamical phase transitions and Majorana modes in dissipative settings. We find that the heat current provides very clear signatures of these Floquet topological phase transitions. In particular, we observe that the derivative of the heat current, with respect to a control parameter, changes sign at the boundaries separating topological phases with differing nonzero numbers of Floquet-Majorana modes. We present a simple scheme to directly count the number of Floquet-Majorana modes in a phase from the Fourier transform of the local spin density profile. Our results are valid provided the anisotropies are not strong and can be easily implemented in quantum engineered systems.

Additional Information

© 2017 American Physical Society. Received 8 December 2016; revised manuscript received 13 July 2017; published 22 September 2017. This project is supported by the SNF Grant No. P2EZP2 172185, Giulio Anderheggen, and the ETH Zürich Foundation.

Attached Files

Published - PhysRevB.96.125144.pdf

Submitted - 1701.05206.pdf

Supplemental Material - Supplementary.pdf

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August 19, 2023
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October 17, 2023