Time-crystalline Topological Superconductors
- Creators
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Chew, Aaron
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Mross, David F.
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Alicea, Jason
Abstract
Time crystals form when arbitrary physical states of a periodically driven system spontaneously break discrete time-translation symmetry. We introduce one-dimensional time-crystalline topological superconductors, for which time-translation symmetry breaking and topological physics intertwine—yielding anomalous Floquet Majorana modes that are not possible in free-fermion systems. Such a phase exhibits a bulk magnetization that returns to its original form after two drive periods, together with Majorana end modes that recover their initial form only after four drive periods. We propose experimental implementations and detection schemes for this new state.
Additional Information
© 2020 American Physical Society. Received 8 August 2019; accepted 31 January 2020; published 5 March 2020. It is a pleasure to thank David Weld and Norm Yao for illuminating discussions. This work was supported by the Army Research Office under Grant No. W911NF-17-1-0323; the NSF through Grant No. DMR-1723367; Grant No. 2016258 from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF); the Israel Science Foundation (ISF); the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center with support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through Grant No. GBMF1250; the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at Caltech; and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's EPiQS Initiative, Grant No. GBMF8682 to J. A.Attached Files
Published - PhysRevLett.124.096802.pdf
Submitted - 1907.12570.pdf
Supplemental Material - Appendix.pdf
Files
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 99249
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20191014-105123769
- W911NF-17-1-0323
- Army Research Office (ARO)
- DMR-1723367
- NSF
- 2016258
- Binational Science Foundation (USA-Israel)
- Israel Science Foundation (ISF)
- Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM)
- GBMF1250
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Caltech
- GBMF8682
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Created
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2019-10-14Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics