Fermi points and topological quantum phase transitions in a model of superconducting wires

The importance of models with an exact solution for the study of materials with non-trivial topological properties has been extensively demonstrated. Among these, the Kitaev model of a one-dimensional $p$-wave superconductor plays a guiding role in the search for Majorana modes in condensed matter systems. Also, the $sp$ chain, with an anti-symmetric mixing among the $s$ and $p$ bands provides a paradigmatic example of a topological insulator with well understood properties. There is an intimate relation between these two models and in particular their topological quantum phase transitions share the same universality class. Here we consider a two-band $sp$ model of spinless fermions with an attractive (inter-band) interaction. Both the interaction and hybridization between the $s$ and $p$ fermions are anti-symmetric. The zero temperature phase diagram of the model presents a variety of phases including a Weyl superconductor, topological insulator and trivial phases. The quantum phase transitions between these phases can be either continuous or discontinuous. We show that the transition from the topological superconducting phase to the trivial one has critical exponents different from those of an equivalent transition in Kitaevs model.

Entanglement modes and topological phase transitions in superconductors

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.