3 research outputs found
Interacting non-Abelian anyons as Majorana fermions in the honeycomb lattice model
We study the collective states of interacting non-Abelian anyons that emerge
in Kitaev's honeycomb lattice model. Vortex-vortex interactions are shown to
lead to the lifting of the topological degeneracy and the energy is discovered
to exhibit oscillations that are consistent with Majorana fermions being
localized at vortex cores. We show how to construct states corresponding to the
fusion channel degrees of freedom and obtain the energy gaps characterizing the
stability of the topological low energy spectrum. To study the collective
behavior of many vortices, we introduce an effective lattice model of Majorana
fermions. We find necessary conditions for it to approximate the spectrum of
the honeycomb lattice model and show that bi-partite interactions are
responsible for the degeneracy lifting also in many vortex systems.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures, published versio
Kaleidoscope of topological phases with multiple Majorana species
Exactly solvable lattice models for spins and non-interacting fermions
provide fascinating examples of topological phases, some of them exhibiting the
localized Majorana fermions that feature in proposals for topological quantum
computing. The Chern invariant is one important characterization of such
phases. Here we look at the square-octagon variant of Kitaev's honeycomb model.
It maps to spinful paired fermions and enjoys a rich phase diagram featuring
distinct abelian and nonabelian phases with and . The and phases all support localized Majorana
modes and are examples of Ising and anyon theories respectively.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. The second version has a new title, reflecting a
change of focus of the presentation in this version. The third version
contains minor changes and is essentially the one published in New Journal of
Physic