Long coherence times for edge spins

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• Paul Fendley (Oxford)
• Thursday 06 October 2016, 13:45-15:00
• Theory Library.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Mike Gunn.

Robust edge zero modes guaranteeing ground-state degeneracy are common in a topological phase of matter. A more dramatic effect occurs in the Ising/Majorana/Kitaev chain: ``strong’’ edge zero modes result in identical spectra in the entire even and odd fermion-number sectors, up to exponentially small finite-size corrections. A strong zero mode in a clean system is not a free-fermionic fluke. In the XYZ chain/coupled Majorana wires, its presence guarantees infinite coherence time for the edge spin, even with an infinite-temperature initial state. Even more remarkably, in certain non-integrable systems like the Ising chain with additional interactions, an “almost” strong zero mode results in a very long coherence time.

This talk is part of the Theoretical Physics Seminars series.

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