Non-Abelian topological order in noncentrosymmetric superconductors with broken time-reversal symmetry

Abstract

We consider two-dimensional noncentrosymmetric superconductors, in which the order parameter is a mixture of s-wave and p-wave parts, in the presence of an externally induced Zeeman splitting. We derive the conditions under which the system is in a non-Abelian phase. By considering the nondegenerate zero-energy Majorana solutions of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) equations for a vortex and by constructing a topological invariant, we show that the condition for the non-Abelian phase to exist is completely independent of the triplet pairing amplitude. The existence condition for the non-Abelian phase derived from the real-space solutions of the BdG equations involves the Pfaffian of the BdG Hamiltonian at k=0, which is completely insensitive to the magnitude of the p-wave component of the order parameter. We arrive at the same conclusion by using the appropriate topological invariant for this case. This is in striking contrast to the analogous condition for the time-reversal invariant topological phases, in which the amplitude of the p-wave component must be larger than the amplitude of the s-wave piece of the order parameter. As a by-product, we establish the intrinsic connection between the Pfaffian of the BdG Hamiltonian at k=0 (which arises at the BdG approach) and the relevant Z topological invariant.

Source-reported materials — not catalogue approval

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