Topological zero modes and correlation pumping in an engineered Kondo lattice

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the existence of topological zero modes in a one-dimensional engineered Kondo lattice driven by many-body correlations, and introduces a correlation matrix pumping method to analyze their topological properties.

Contribution

It reveals how collective Kondo physics can induce topological excitations and provides a new approach to engineer topological Kondo insulators using quantum magnetism.

Findings

Topological zero modes are found in the engineered Kondo lattice.

These zero modes are robust against disorder.

A correlation matrix pumping method is developed to compute topological invariants from the many-body wavefunction.

Abstract

Topological phases of matter provide a flexible platform to engineer unconventional quantum excitations in quantum materials. Beyond single particle topological matter, in systems with strong quantum many-body correlations, many-body effects can be the driving force for non-trivial topology. Here, we propose a one-dimensional engineered Kondo lattice where the emergence of topological excitations is driven by collective many-body Kondo physics. We first show the existence of topological zero modes in this system by solving the interacting model with tensor networks, and demonstrate their robustness against disorder. To unveil the origin of the topological zero modes, we analyze the associated periodic Anderson model showing that it can be mapped to a topological non-Hermitian model, enabling rationalizing the origin of the topological zero modes. We finally show that the topological invariant of the many-body Kondo lattice can be computed with a correlation matrix pumping method directly with the exact quantum many-body wavefunction. Our results provide a strategy to engineer topological Kondo insulators, highlighting quantum magnetism as a driving force in engineering topological matter.