Search Talks

Our theoretical investigation explores a feasible route to engineer the two-dimensional (2D) Kitaev model of first-order topological superconductivity (TSC) introducing a magnetic spin texture. The main outcome of 2D Kitaev’s model is that a px + py type superconductor can exhibit a gapless topological superconducting phase in bulk hosting non-dispersive Majorana flat edge mode (MFEM) at the boundary. Our proposed general minimal model Hamiltonian is suitable to describe magnet/superconductor heterostructures. It reveals robust MFEM within the emergent gap of Shiba bands, spatially localised at the edges of a 2D magnetic domain of spin- spiral. We finally verify this concept from real material perspectives by considering Mn (Cr) monolayer grown on an s-wave superconducting substrate, Nb(110) under strain (Nb(001)). In both the 2D cases, the antiferromagnetic spin-spiral solutions exhibit robust MFEM at certain domain edges. This approach, particularly when the MFEM appears in the TSC phase for such heterostructure materials, offers significant prospect to extend the realm of TSC in 2D. Very recently, we expand this theoretical framework for engineering a 2D second-order topological superconductor (SOTSC) by utilizing a heterostructure: incorporating noncollinear magnetic textures between an s-wave superconductor and a 2D quantum spin Hall insulator. It stabilizes the SOTSC phase within the Shiba band, resulting in Majorana corner modes (MCMs) at the four corners of a 2D domain. The calculated non-zero quadrupole moment characterizes the bulk higher-order topology. Analytically calculated effective pairings in the bulk illuminate the microscopic behaviour of the SOTSC. Such first and second order Majorana modes are believed to be the building blocks for the fault-tolerant topological quantum computation.

Reference: Phys. Rev. B (Letter) 109, L041409 (2024) .
Phys. Rev. B (Letter) 109, L121301 (2024).

The effects of disorder and chaos on quantum many-body systems can be superficially similar, yet their interplay has not been sufficiently explored. We study this using an all to all interacting spin chain with disordered interacting term in presence of periodic kicks. The disorder free version of this model shows regular and chaotic dynamics within permutation symmetric subspace as the interaction strength is increased. When the disorder is increased, we find a transition from a dynamics within permutation symmetric subspace to full Hilbert space where the expectation values of various operators are given by random matrix theory in full Hilbert space. Interestingly, finite size scaling predicts a continuous phase transition at a critical disorder strength.
 

In recent years, ‘measurement-induced phase transitions’ (MIPT), have led to a new paradigm for dynamical phase transitions in quantum many-body systems. I will discuss a model of continuously monitored or weakly measured arrays of Josephson junctions (JJAs) with feedback. Using a variational self-consistent harmonic approximation, as well as analysis in the semiclassical limit, strong feedback and measurement limit, and weak coupling perturbative renormalization group, I will show that the model undergoes re-entrant superconductor-insulator MIPTs in its long-time non-equilibrium steady state as a function of measurement and feedback strength. I will contrast the phase diagram of monitored JJA with the well-studied case of dissipative JJA.
 

We discuss the entanglement between two critical spin chains induced by the Bell-state measurements, when each chain was independently in the ground state before the measurement. This corresponds to a many-body version of “entanglement swapping”. We employ a boundary conformal field theory (CFT) approach and describe the measurements as conformal boundary conditions in the replicated field theory. We show that the swapped entanglement exhibits a logarithmic scaling, whose coefficient takes a universal value determined by the scaling dimension of the boundary condition changing operator. We apply our framework to the critical spin-1/2 XXZ chain and determine the universal coefficient by the boundary CFT analysis, which is verified by a numerical calculation.

This talk is based on M. Hoshino, M. O., and Y. Ashida, arXiv:2406.12377
 

Measurement induced phase transitions (MIPT) occur when the natural entangling dynamics in many-body systems is overcome by persistent but random single particle measurements. The entanglement originates from two-qubit gates, and we consider circuits when this is fixed and the one qubit operations are random unitaries. This talk discusses how the entangling power and other local unitary invariants of special two-qubit gates modify the phase transition parameters with much more robust circuits possible than with typical gates. Apart from the usual bipartite entanglement, the possible relevance of some other characterizations of local entanglement structure in MIPT are also discussed. Entangling power, gate typicality and Measurement-induced Phase Transitions,

Based on: Sourav Manna, Vaibhav Madhok, Arul Lakshminarayan, arXiv:2407.17776
 

Climate Scientists are increasingly turning to Machine Learning to answer various questions in their domain. In this talk, we will discuss a few typical problems related to Indian Monsoon, and discuss ML-based approaches for them. Specifically, we will focus on multi-scale forecasting, downscaling, and attribution to large-scale drivers.