Transport properties of an interacting Majorana chain

TL;DR

This paper investigates the transport properties of a 1D chain of interacting Majorana bound states, revealing a four-fold periodicity in topological classes and the emergence of a robust many-body zero mode in the thermodynamic limit.

Contribution

It introduces a model of an interacting Majorana chain with modified time-reversal symmetry and analyzes its topological and transport properties, highlighting the four-fold periodicity and zero mode.

Findings

Four-fold periodicity in topological classes of the chain.

Transport properties vary significantly with chain length.

Presence of a robust many-body zero mode in the thermodynamic limit.

Abstract

We study a one-dimensional (1D) chain of $2N$ Majorana bound states, which interact through a local quartic interaction. This model describes for example the edge physics of a quasi 1D stack of $2N$ Kitaev chains with modified time-reversal symmetry $T\gamma_iT^{-1}=\gamma_i$, which precludes the presence of quadratic coupling. The ground state of our 1D Majorana chain displays a four-fold periodicity in $N$, corresponding to the four distinct topological classes of the stacked Kitaev chains. We analyze the transport properties of the 1D Majorana chain, when probed by local conductors located at its ends. We find that for finite but large $N$, the scattering matrix partially reflects the four-fold periodicity, and the chain exhibits strikingly different transport properties for different chain lengths. In the thermodynamic limit, the 1D Majorana chain hosts a robust many-body zero mode, which indicates that the corresponding stacked two-dimensional bulk system realizes a weak topological phase.