Hybridization induced triplet superconductivity with Sz=0

Abstract

The Kitaev superconducting chain is a model of spinless fermions with tripletlike superconductivity. It has raised interest since for some values of its parameters it presents a nontrivial topological phase that hosts Majorana fermions. The physical realization of a Kitaev chain is complicated by the scarcity of triplet superconductivity in real physical systems. Many proposals have been put forward to overcome this difficulty and fabricate artificial triplet superconducting chains. In this work we study a superconducting chain of spinful fermions forming Cooper pairs, in a triplet S=1 state, but with Sz=0. The motivation is that such pairing can be induced in chains that couple through an antisymmetric hybridization to an s-wave superconducting substrate. We study the nature of edge states and the topological properties of these chains. In the presence of a magnetic field the chain can sustain gapless superconductivity with pairs of Fermi points. The momentum space topology of these Fermi points is nontrivial, in the sense that they can only disappear by annihilating each other. For small magnetic fields, we find well-defined degenerate edge modes with finite Zeemann energy. These modes are not symmetry protected and decay abruptly in the bulk as their energy merges with the continuum of excitations.

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