PIRSA:12090039

Effect of thermal fluctuations in topological p-wave superconductors

Bauer, B. (2012). Effect of thermal fluctuations in topological p-wave superconductors. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/12090039

Bauer, Bela. Effect of thermal fluctuations in topological p-wave superconductors. Perimeter Institute, Sep. 21, 2012, https://pirsa.org/12090039 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:12090039,
            doi = {10.48660/12090039},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/12090039},
            author = {Bauer, Bela},
            keywords = {Condensed Matter},
            language = {en},
            title = {Effect of thermal fluctuations in topological p-wave superconductors},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2012},
            month = {sep},
            note = {PIRSA:12090039 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Bela Bauer Microsoft Corporation

Talk numberPIRSA:12090039
DOI10.48660/12090039
Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

In this talk, I will present our recent work on the effect of thermal fluctuations on the topological stability of chiral p-wave superconductors. We consider two models of superconductors: spinless and spinful with a focus on topological properties and Majorana zero-energy modes. We show that proliferation of vortex-antivortex pairs above the Kosterlitz-Thouless temperature T_KT drives the transition from a thermal Quantum Hall insulator to a thermal metal/insulator, and dramatically modifies the ground-state degeneracy splitting. This shows that in order to utilize 2D chiral p-wave superconductors for topological quantum computing, the temperature should be much smaller than T_KT. Within the spinful chiral p-wave model, we also investigate the interplay between half-quantum vortices carrying Majorana zero-energy modes and full-quantum vortices having trivial topological charge, and discuss topological properties of half-quantum vortices in the background of proliferating full-quantum vortices.