Charge conserving spin singlet and spin triplet superconductors in one dimension are described by the $U(1)$ symmetric Thirring Hamiltonian. We solve the model with open boundary conditions on the a finite line segment by means of the Bethe Ansatz. We show that the ground state displays a fourfold degeneracy when the bulk is in the spin triplet superconducting phase. This degeneracy corresponds to the existence of zero energy boundary bound states localized at the edges which may be interpreted, in the light of the previous semi-classical analysis due to Kesselman and Berg cite{Keselman2015}, as resulting from the existence of fractional spin $pm 1/4$ localized at the two edges of the system.
A time periodic driving on a topologically trivial system induces edge modes and topological properties. In this work we consider triplet and singlet superconductors subject to periodic variations of the chemical potential, spin-orbit coupling and magnetization, in both topologically trivial and nontrivial phases, and study their influence on the charge and spin currents that propagate along the edges of the two-dimensional system, for moderate to large driving frequencies. Currents associated with the edge modes are induced in the trivial phases and enhanced in the topological phases. In some cases there is a sign reversal of the currents as a consequence of the periodic driving. The edge states associated with the finite quasi-energy states at the edge of the Floquet zone are in general robust, while the stability of the zero quasi-energy states depends on the parameters. Also, the spin polarization of the Floquet spectrum quasi-energies is strong as for the unperturbed topological phases. It is found that in some cases the unperturbed edge states are immersed in a continuum of states due to the perturbation, particularly if the driving frequency is not large enough. However, their contribution to the edge currents and spin polarization is still significant.
Nodal topological superconductors display zero-energy Majorana flat bands at generic edges. The flatness of these edge bands, which is protected by time-reversal and translation symmetry, gives rise to an extensive ground-state degeneracy. Therefore, even arbitrarily weak interactions lead to an instability of the flat-band edge states towards time-reversal and translation-symmetry-broken phases, which lift the ground-state degeneracy. We examine the instabilities of the flat-band edge states of d_{xy}-wave superconductors by performing a mean-field analysis in the Majorana basis of the edge states. The leading instabilities are Majorana mass terms, which correspond to coherent superpositions of particle-particle and particle-hole channels in the fermionic language. We find that attractive interactions induce three different mass terms. One is a coherent superposition of imaginary s-wave pairing and current order, and another combines a charge-density-wave and finite-momentum singlet pairing. Repulsive interactions, on the other hand, lead to ferromagnetism together with spin-triplet pairing at the edge. Our quantum Monte Carlo simulations confirm these findings and demonstrate that these instabilities occur even in the presence of strong quantum fluctuations. We discuss the implications of our results for experiments on cuprate high-temperature superconductors.
The spin-triplet state is most likely realized in uranium ferromagnetic superconductors, UGe2, URhGe, UCoGe. The microscopic coexistence of ferromagnetism and superconductivity means that the Cooper pair should be realized under the strong internal field due the ferromagnetism, leading to the spin-triplet state with equal spin pairing. The field-reinforced superconductivity, which is observed in all three materials when the ferromagnetic fluctuations are enhanced, is one of the strong evidences for the spin-triplet superconductivity. We present here the results of a newly discovered spin-triplet superconductor, UTe2, and compare those with the results of ferromagnetic superconductors. Although no magnetic order is found in UTe2, there are similarities between UTe2 and ferromagnetic superconductors. For example, the huge upper critical field exceeding the Pauli limit and the field-reentrant superconductivity for H || b-axis are observed in UTe2, URhGe and UCoGe. We also show the specific heat results on UTe2 in different quality samples, focusing on the residual density of states in the superconducting phase.
We investigate one-dimensional charge conserving, spin-singlet (SSS) and spin-triplet (STS) superconductors in the presence of boundary fields. In systems with Open Boundary Conditions (OBC) it has been demonstrated that STS display a four-fold topological degeneracy, protected by the $mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry which reverses the spins of all fermions, whereas SSS are topologically trivial. In this work we show that it is not only the type of the bulk superconducting instability that determines the eventual topological nature of a phase, but rather the interplay between bulk and boundary properties. In particular we show by means of the Bethe Ansatz technique that SSS may as well be in a $mathbb{Z}_2$-protected topological phase provided suitable twisted open boundary conditions ${widehat{OBC}}$ are imposed. More generally, we find that depending on the boundary fields, a given superconductor, either SSS or STS, may exhibits several types of phases such as topological, mid-gap and trivial phases; each phase being characterized by a boundary fixed point which which we determine. Of particular interest are the mid-gap phases which are stabilized close to the topological fixed point. They include both fractionalized phases where spin-$frac{1}{4}$ bound-states are localized at the two edges of the system and un-fractionalized phases where a spin-$frac{1}{2}$ bound-state is localized at either the left or the right edge.
Topological insulators and topological superconductors display various topological phases that are characterized by different Chern numbers or by gapless edge states. In this work we show that various quantum information methods such as the von Neumann entropy, entanglement spectrum, fidelity, and fidelity spectrum may be used to detect and distinguish topological phases and their transitions. As an example we consider a two-dimensional $p$-wave superconductor, with Rashba spin-orbit coupling and a Zeeman term. The nature of the phases and their changes are clarified by the eigenvectors of the $k$-space reduced density matrix. We show that in the topologically nontrivial phases the highest weight eigenvector is fully aligned with the triplet pairing state. A signature of the various phase transitions between two points on the parameter space is encoded in the $k$-space fidelity operator.