Angelo Carollo — Università di Palermo #
Decoherence-induced topological phase transition in 1D fermion model. #
The 1D Kitaev chain is a prototypical example of a system which shows topological order, signalled by the 
presence of an odd number of spatially separated Majorana zero modes. Depending on the Hamiltonian 
parameters, such a system undergoes a transition from a topologically trivial to a non-trivial phase. We 
show that a suitably engineered decoherence may indeed enact a similar transition to a topologically 
non-trivial phase, starting from an otherwise trivial one. Such a phenomenon is the result of the 
interplay between Hamiltonian and dissipative interactions. These findings are relevant to applications in 
solid state physics as well as in the context of cold-atoms.
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In collaboration with Fabio Anzà, Davide Valenti, Bernardo Spagnolo