Stable Topological Superfluid Phase of Ultracold Polar Fermionic Molecules

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that ultracold polar fermionic molecules in 2D can form a topological p-wave superfluid phase due to dipole-dipole interactions, with potential applications in quantum computing.

Contribution

It introduces a method to realize a topological superfluid phase in ultracold polar molecules via microwave dressing, highlighting its stability and potential for quantum information.

Findings

Topological p_x+ip_y superfluid phase can be achieved in 2D polar molecules.

The superfluid state is stable with a lifetime of seconds at relevant densities.

Dipole-dipole interactions induce attractive forces leading to superfluid pairing.

Abstract

We show that single-component fermionic polar molecules confined to a 2D geometry and dressed by a microwave field, may acquire an attractive $1/r^3$ dipole-dipole interaction leading to superfluid p-wave pairing at sufficiently low temperatures even in the BCS regime. The emerging state is the topological $p_x+ip_y$ phase promising for topologically protected quantum information processing. The main decay channel is via collisional transitions to dressed states with lower energies and is rather slow, setting a lifetime of the order of seconds at 2D densities $\sim 10^8$ cm$^{-2}$.