Bosonic Andreev bound state

Abstract

A general free bosonic system with a pairing term is described by a bosonic Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) Hamiltonian. The representation is given by a pseudo-Hermitian matrix, which is crucially different from the Hermitian representation of a fermionic BdG Hamiltonian. In fermionic BdG systems, a topological invariant of the whole particle (hole) bands can be nontrivial, which characterizes the Andreev bound states (ABS), including Majorana fermions. In bosonic cases, on the other hand, the corresponding topological invariant is thought to be trivial, owing to the stability condition of the bosonic ground state. In this paper, we consider a two-dimensional model that realizes a bosonic analogy of the ABS at the boundaries. The boundary states of this model are located outside the bulk bands and are characterized by a nontrivial Berry phase (or polarization) of the hole band. Furthermore, we investigate the zero-energy flat-band limit in which the Bloch Hamiltonian is defective, where the particle and hole states are identical to each other. In this limit, the Berry phase is Z2 quantized thanks to an emergent parity-time symmetry induced by the defective nature. This is an example of a topological invariant that uses the defective nature as a projection structure. Thus, boundary states in our model are essentially different from Hermitian topological modes and their variants. We also discuss the entanglement entropy of the system with bosonic Andreev bound states, motivated by the relationship between our model and the continuous variable surface codes.

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