Electrical, thermal and thermoelectric transport in open long-range Kitaev chain

TL;DR

This paper investigates how long-range interactions in a Kitaev chain affect electrical, thermal, and thermoelectric transport properties, revealing unique features that distinguish it from the short-range version and aid in understanding topological phases.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of transport in a long-range Kitaev chain, highlighting differences from the short-range model and identifying unique spectral and topological features.

Findings

Transport characteristics differ significantly from short-range Kitaev chain.

Emergence of massive Dirac fermions affects transport properties.

Unique spectral features influence electrical and thermal responses.

Abstract

We study electrical, thermal and thermoelectric transport in a hybrid device consisting of a long-range Kitaev chain coupled to two metallic leads at two ends. Electrical and thermal currents are calculated in this device under both voltage and thermal bias conditions. We find that the transport characteristics of the long-range Kitaev chain are distinguishably different from its short-range counterpart, which is well known for hosting zero energy Majorana edge modes under some specific range of values of the model parameters. The emergence of massive Dirac fermions, the absence of gap closing at the topological phase transition point and some special features of the energy spectrum which are unique to the long-range Kitaev chain, significantly alter electrical/thermal current vs. voltage/temperature bias characteristics in comparison with that of the short-range Kitaev chain. These novel transport characteristics of the long-range Kitaev model can be helpful in understanding nontrivial topological phases of the long-range Kitaev chain.