Particle and thermal transport through one dimensional topological systems via Lindblad formalism

TL;DR

This paper investigates particle and thermal transport in one-dimensional topological systems, specifically the SSH model and Kitaev chain, using Lindblad formalism to reveal how topological edge states influence transport properties.

Contribution

The study applies Lindblad quantum master equations to analyze transport in topological systems, highlighting differences in edge state effects between SSH and Kitaev models.

Findings

Transport suppression in SSH due to edge states in topological regime

Edge states have less impact on Kitaev chain transport away from transition

Topological properties significantly affect quantum transport behaviors

Abstract

We apply the Lindblad quantum master equation to two examples of one-dimensional topological systems, the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model and Kitaev chain, to study their particle and thermal transport. The steady-state properties are obtained by decomposing fermions into Majorana fermions and extracting their correlation functions. We focus on the particle and thermal currents flowing through the bulk when the system is driven by two reservoirs coupled to the two ends. The ratio of the currents of the SSH model from the topological and trivial regimes with the same bandwidth demonstrates suppression of transport due to the edge states, which couple to the reservoirs but do not participate in transport. A similar comparison cannot be performed for the Kitaev chain because the topological and trivial regimes have different bandwidths, and the edge states are less significant away from the transition. Therefore, the results contrast various topological properties in quantum transport.