Observability of a Sharp Majorana Transition in a Few-Body Model

TL;DR

This paper identifies observable signatures of Majorana quasiparticles in a few-body cold-atom model, highlighting a sharp topological transition detectable through local measurements, thus enabling experimental exploration of Majorana physics in small systems.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a few-body cold-atom system can exhibit a sharp topological transition with observable signatures, advancing experimental detection methods for Majorana quasiparticles.

Findings

Mutual information indicates a sharp topological transition.

Local density and parity measurements can detect Majorana quasiparticles.

Smooth changes in density and correlations contrast with the sharp transition signal.

Abstract

We propose experimentally observable signatures of of topological Majorana quasiparticles in the few-body limit of the interacting cold-atom model of [Iemini et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 118 200404 (2017)]. In this limit, the total on-site density and single-body correlations change smoothly with the model parameters, while the calculated mutual information of opposite ends of the lattice indicates a sharp transition of the system to a topological ground state. Furthermore, local density and parity measurements provide an experimentally viable path for observing the ground state Majorana quasiparticles in ultracold atoms. Our results lay out a promising future for utilizing few-body systems as a testing ground for Majorana physics.