Kitaev Building-block Construction for Inversion-Protected Higher-order Topological Superconductors

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Kitaev building-block framework to construct and diagnose inversion-protected higher-order topological superconductors, enabling real-space analysis and identification of Majorana corner modes.

Contribution

It develops a comprehensive real-space methodology using Kitaev building blocks for constructing and diagnosing higher-order topological superconductors with inversion symmetry.

Findings

Derived a Majorana counting rule for diagnosing higher-order topology.

Constructed minimal models with symmetry-protected Majorana corner modes.

Validated the diagnosis on a superconductor model with Wannier obstruction.

Abstract

We propose a general theoretical framework for both constructing and diagnosing inversion-protected higher-order topological superconductors using Kitaev building blocks, a higher-dimensional generalization of Kitaev's one-dimensional Majorana model. For a given crystalline symmetry, the Kitaev building blocks serve as a complete basis to construct all possible Kitaev superconductors that satisfy the symmetry requirements. We derive a simple yet powerful Majorana counting rule that can unambiguously diagnose the existence of higher-order topology for all Kitaev superconductors. We expect this real-space diagnosis to work for general two-dimensional higher-order topological superconductors within this symmetry class. As proof of concept, we have identified two inequivalent stacking strategies using the Kitaev building blocks, based on which we have constructed minimal tight-binding models with symmetry-protecetd Majorana corner modes. Moreover, we have successfully applied our diagnosis to comprehend the Majorana corner physcis in a superconductor model with a fragile Wannier obstruction, confirming the validity of our theory beyond the Kitaev limit. Our work paves the way for interpreting higher-order topological superconductivity from the real-space perspective.