Polarity of the fermionic condensation in the $p$-wave Kitaev model on a square lattice

TL;DR

This paper investigates the fermionic condensation in a $p$-wave Kitaev model on a square lattice, revealing the nature of pair condensation, phase diagram, and long-range order through exact solutions and new characterization methods.

Contribution

It provides an exact solution showing collective pairing mode condensation and introduces new quantities to characterize fermionic condensation in this model.

Findings

Ground state exhibits a coherent superposition of pair configurations.

Phase diagram includes gapful and topological gapless phases.

Analytical pair-pair correlator indicates off-diagonal long-range order.

Abstract

In a $p$-wave Kitaev model, the nearest neighbor pairing term results in the formation of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) pair in the ground state. In this work, we study the fermionic condensation of real-space pairs in a $p$-wave Kitaev model on a square lattice with a uniform phase gradient pairing term along both directions. The exact solution shows that the ground state can be expressed in a coherent-state-like form, indicating the condensation of a collective pairing mode, which is the superposition of different configurations of pairs in real space. The amplitudes of each configuration depend not only on the size but also on the orientation of the pair. We employ three quantities to characterize the ground state in the thermodynamic limit. (i) A BCS-pair order parameter is introduced to characterize the phase diagram, consisting of gapful and topological gapless phases. (ii) The particle-particle correlation length is obtained to reveal the polarity of the pair condensation. In addition, (iii) a pair-pair correlator is analytically derived to indicate the possessing of off-diagonal long-range order. Our work proposes an alternative method for understanding fermionic condensation.