Effects of geometric frustration in Kitaev chains

Abstract

AbstractWe study the topological phase transitions of a Kitaev chain frustrated by the addition of a single long-range hopping. In order to study the topological properties of the resulting legged-ring geometry (Kitaev tie model), we generalize the transfer matrix approach through which the emergence of Majorana edge modes is analyzed. We find that geometric frustration gives rise to a topological phase diagram in which non-trivial phases alternate with trivial ones at varying the range of the hopping and the chemical potential. Robustness to disorder of non-trivial phases is also proven. Moreover, geometric frustration effects persist when translational invariance is restored by considering a multiple-tie system. These findings shed light on an entire class of experimentally realizable topological systems with long-range couplings.