Green Function Invariants for Floquet Topological Superconductivity Induced by Proximity Effects

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Green function method to predict Floquet topological phases in driven superconductor-semiconductor hybrids, emphasizing the importance of self-energy effects and level broadening on topological invariants and Majorana modes.

Contribution

It develops a novel approach to construct Floquet topological invariants by incorporating the self-energy's hermitian and anti-hermitian parts, improving predictions in driven hybrid systems.

Findings

Level broadening can hinder Floquet topological phase observation.

Proper self-energy treatment is crucial for accurate topological predictions.

Broadening effects impact the stability of Majorana $\

Abstract

We bring forward a Green function approach for the prediction of Floquet topological phases in driven superconductor-semiconductor hybrids. Although it is common to treat the superconducting component as a mere Cooper-pair reservoir, it was recently pointed out that such an approximation breaks down in the presence of driving, due to the emergence of level broadening. Here, we go beyond these recent works and prescribe how to construct the Floquet topological invariants for such driven hybrids. Specifically, we propose to first obtain the midgap quasi-energy spectra by including the hermitian part of the semiconductor's self-energy and, subsequently, read out the respective level broadenings by projecting the anti-hermitian part of the self-energy onto the quasi-energy eigenvectors. We exemplify our approach for a Rashba nanowire coupled to a superconductor and a time-dependent Zeeman field. Using our method, we obtain the Floquet band structure, the respective level broadenings, and the topological invariants. Our analysis reinforces the need to properly account for the self-energy, and corroborates that broadening effects can hinder the observation of the Floquet topological phases and especially of those harboring Majorana $\pi$ modes.