Non-topological nature of the edge current in a chiral p-wave superconductor

Abstract

The edges of time reversal symmetry breaking topological superconductors support chiral Majorana bound states as well as spontaneous charge currents. The Majorana modes are a robust, topological property, but the charge currents are non-topological--and therefore sensitive to microscopic details--even if we neglect Meissner screening. We give insight into the non-topological nature of edge currents in chiral p-wave superconductors using a variety of theoretical techniques, including lattice Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations, the quasiclassical approximation, and the gradient expansion, and describe those special cases where edge currents do have a topological character. While edge currents are not quantized, they are generically large, but can be substantially reduced for a sufficiently anisotropic gap function, a scenario of possible relevance for the putative chiral p-wave superconductor Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$.

arXiv comment11 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (46)

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• Exotic Topological Phenomena in Chiral Superconducting States on Doped Quantum Spin Hall Insulators with Honeycomb Lattices