Thermal metal-insulator transition in a helical topological superconductor

Abstract

Two-dimensional superconductors with time-reversal symmetry have a Z_2 topological invariant, that distinguishes phases with and without helical Majorana edge states. We study the topological phase transition in a class-DIII network model, and show that it is associated with a metal-insulator transition for the thermal conductance of the helical superconductor. The localization length diverges at the transition with critical exponent nu approx 2.0, about twice the known value in a chiral superconductor.

9 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables

References in corpus (9)

• Anderson Transitions
• Topological Phases of Noncentrosymmetric Superconductors: Edge States, Majorana Fermions, and the Non-Abelian Statistics
• Topological spin-current in non-centrosymmetric superconductors
• Critical exponent for the quantum Hall transition
• Topological field theory and thermal responses of interacting topological superconductors
• Two-dimensional spin-filtered chiral network model for the Z_2 quantum spin-Hall effect
• Boundary criticality at the Anderson transition between a metal and a quantum spin Hall insulator in two dimensions
• Density of quasiparticle states for a two-dimensional disordered system: Metallic, insulating, and critical behavior in the class D thermal quantum Hall effect
• Universal critical exponent in class D superconductors

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Chiral anomaly and transport in Weyl metals
• Anderson localization and the topology of classifying spaces
• Bimodal conductance distribution of Kitaev edge modes in topological superconductors
• Extended topological group structure due to average reflection symmetry
• Quantum criticality at the Chern-to-normal insulator transition
• Topology and localization of a periodically driven Kitaev model
• Density of states at disorder-induced phase transitions in a multichannel Majorana wire