SciPost Commentary Page
Original publication:
| Title: | Strongly interacting Majorana modes in an array of Josephson junctions |
| Author(s): | Fabian Hassler, Dirk Schuricht |
| As Contributors: | Fabian Hassler · Dirk Schuricht |
| Journal ref.: | New Journal of Physics 14, 125018 |
| DOI: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/14/12/125018 |
| Date: | 2012-12-31 |
Abstract:
An array of superconducting islands with semiconducting nanowires in the right regime provides a macroscopic implementation of Kitaev's toy model for Majorana wires. We show that a capacitive coupling between adjacent islands leads to an effective interaction between the Majorana modes. We demonstrate that, even though strong repulsive interaction eventually drives the system into a Mott insulating state, the competition between the (trivial) band insulator and the (trivial) Mott insulator leads to an interjacent topological insulating state for arbitrary strong interactions.
Dirk Schuricht on 2016-06-15 [id 45]
Two minor corrections:
(i) In the discussion of the phase digram (Sec. 4) the AFM phase has $\langle\sigma_k^z\rangle<0$.
(ii) Eq. (5) is only valid for $E_M/\Delta\ll 1$. The correct behaviour in the perturbative regime $|U|\ll E_M$ reads $\Delta=E_M+32U/(6\pi)$. See also Ref. 40 of N M Gergs, L Fritz and Schuricht, PRB 93, 075129 (2016).