Entanglement and disordered-enhanced topological phase in the Kitaev chain

Liron Levy, Moshe Goldstein

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In recent years, tools from quantum information theory have become indispensable in characterizing many-body systems. In this work, we employ measures of entanglement to study the interplay between disorder and the topological phase in 1D systems of the Kitaev type, which can host Majorana end modes at their edges. We find that the entanglement entropy may actually increase as a result of disorder, and identify the origin of this behavior in the appearance of an infinite-disorder critical point. We also employ the entanglement spectrum to accurately determine the phase diagram of the system, and find that disorder may enhance the topological phase, and lead to the appearance of Majorana zero modes in systems whose clean version is trivial.

Original languageEnglish
Article number33
JournalUniverse
Volume5
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2019

Keywords

  • Disorder
  • Entanglement
  • Majorana zero modes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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