Resonantly Tunable Majorana Polariton in a Microwave Cavity

We study the spectrum of a one-dimensional Kitaev chain placed in a microwave cavity. In the off-resonant regime, the frequency shift of the cavity can be used to identify the topological phase transition of the coupled system. In the resonant regime, the topology of the system can be controlled via the microwave cavity occupation and, moreover, for a large number of photons (classical limit), the physics becomes similar to that of periodically-driven systems (Floquet insulators). We also analyze numerically a finite chain and show the existence of a degenerate subspace in the presence of the cavity that can be interpreted as a \textit{Majorana polariton}.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Photon assisted braiding of Majorana fermions in a cavity

We study the dynamical process of braiding Majorana bound states in the presence of the coupling to photons in a microwave cavity. We show theoretically that the $\pi/4$ phase associated with the braiding of Majoranas, as well as the parity of the ground state are imprinted into the photonic field of the cavity, which can be detected by dispersive readouts techniques. These manifestations are purely dynamical, they occur in the absence of any splitting of the MBS that are exchanged, and they disappear in the static setups studied previously. Conversely, the cavity can affect the braiding phase, which in turn should allow for cavity controlled braiding.Comment: 4.5 pages+7 pages supplementary material, 4 figure

Acoustic phonons and strain in core/shell nanowires

We study theoretically the low-energy phonons and the static strain in cylindrical core/shell nanowires (NWs). Assuming pseudomorphic growth, isotropic media, and a force-free wire surface, we derive algebraic expressions for the dispersion relations, the displacement fields, and the stress and strain components from linear elasticity theory. Our results apply to NWs with arbitrary radii and arbitrary elastic constants for both core and shell. The expressions for the static strain are consistent with experiments, simulations, and previous analytical investigations; those for phonons are consistent with known results for homogeneous NWs. Among other things, we show that the dispersion relations of the torsional, longitudinal, and flexural modes change differently with the relative shell thickness, and we identify new terms in the corresponding strain tensors that are absent for uncapped NWs. We illustrate our results via the example of Ge/Si core/shell NWs and demonstrate that shell-induced strain has large effects on the hole spectrum of these systems.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figure

Controlling topological superconductivity by magnetization dynamics

We study theoretically a chain of precessing classical magnetic impurities in an $s$-wave superconductor. Utilizing a rotating wave description, we derive an effective Hamiltonian that describes the emergent Shiba band. We find that this Hamiltonian shows non-trivial topological properties, and we obtain the corresponding topological phase diagrams both numerically and analytically. We show that changing the precession frequency offers a control over topological phase transitions and the emergence of Majorana bound states. We propose driving the magnetic impurities or magnetic texture into precession by means of spin-transfer torque in a spin-Hall setup, and manipulate it using spin superfluidity in the case of planar magnetic order.Comment: 5 pages+9 pages supplementary materia