Special CPM Seminar

Pre-topological fractional states in one dimension

Eran Sela

Tel-Aviv University

There is an urging search for physical realizations of topological zero modes e.g. of  Majorana type or beyond in a variety of setups, such as vortices of 2D topological materials or domain walls in 1D wires. An important question that received a strictly negative answer is weather one can realize exotic zero modes beyond Majorana fermions in 1D. Here, motivated by impressive progress in the fields of electronic systems and highly controllable cold atomic systems, I will revisit some of these issues. Based on the wire-construction approach I will theoretically construct, with concrete lattice cold-atom realizations, building blocks of fractional topological states, demonstrating fractional edge states and topological pumping, and argue that these systems can also realize pre-topological zero modes of parafermion type useful for topological quantum computation.

https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.7.021033