Critical and Topological Phases of Dimerized Kitaev Chain in Presence of Quasiperiodic Potential

TL;DR

This paper explores the interplay of localization, criticality, and topological phases in a dimerized Kitaev chain with quasiperiodic potential, revealing multiple phase transitions and mobility edges through numerical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive study of the combined effects of dimerization and quasiperiodic potential on topological and localization properties in the Kitaev chain, identifying new phases and transitions.

Findings

Existence of extended, critical, and localized phases due to competing effects.

Identification of mobility edges between different phases.

Observation of topological phase transitions influenced by quasiperiodic potential.

Abstract

We investigate localization and topological properties of a dimerized Kitaev chain with p-wave superconducting correlations and a quasiperiodically modulated chemical potential. With regard to the localization studies, we demonstrate the existence of distinct phases, such as, the extended phase, the critical (intermediate) phase, and the localized phase that arise due to the competition between the dimerization and the onsite quasiperiodic potential. Most interestingly, the critical phase comprises of two different mobility edges that are found to exist between the extended to the localized phase, and between the critical (multifractal) and localized phases. We perform our analysis employing the inverse and the normalized participation ratios, fractal dimension, and the level spacing. Subsequently, a finite-size analysis is done to provide support of our findings. Furthermore, we study the topological properties of the zero-energy edge modes via computing the real-space winding number and number of the Majorana zero modes present in the system. We specifically illustrate that our model exhibits a phase transition from a topologically trivial to a non-trivial phase (topological Anderson phase) beyond a critical dimerization strength under the influence of the quasiperiodic potential strength. Finally, in presence of a large potential, we demonstrate that the system undergoes yet another transition from the topologically non-trivial to an Anderson localized phase. Thus, we believe that our results will aid exploration of fundamentally different physics pertaining to the critical and the topological Anderson phases.