Creating p-wave superfluids and topological excitations in optical lattices

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to realize p-wave superfluids with topological excitations in optical lattices, analyzing their excitation spectrum and identifying conditions for zero-energy modes with topological properties.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to creating p-wave superfluids in optical lattices and characterizes the topological zero-energy modes under various interaction strengths.

Findings

Zero-energy topological modes exist within specific interaction ranges.

Lattice effects induce extended zero-energy modes with checkerboard and d-wave symmetry near half-filling.

The excitation spectrum's linearity is lost at half-filling, leading to new topological phenomena.

Abstract

We propose to realize a p-wave superfluid using bosons mixed with a single species of fermions in a deep optical lattice. We analyze with a self-consistent method its excitation spectrum in presence of a vortex, and we point out the range of interaction strengths in which the zero-energy mode with topological character exists on a finite optical lattice. Lattice effects are strongest close to fermionic half-filling: here the linearity of the low-lying spectrum is lost, and a new class of extended zero-energy modes with checkerboard structure and d-wave symmetry appears.