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${}_4$.

11 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Observation of half-height magnetization steps in Sr2RuO4
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• Hidden quasi one-dimensional superconductivity in Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$
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• Mass flows and angular momentum density for $p_x+i{p}_y$ paired fermions in a harmonic trap
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• Suppression of Spontaneous Supercurrents in a Chiral p-Wave Superconductor
• Effect of the RuO6 octahedron rotation at the Sr2RuO4 surface on topological property

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Intrinsic ac anomalous Hall effect of nonsymmorphic chiral superconductors with an application to $\mathrm{UP}{\mathrm{t}}_3$
• Higher angular momentum pairing states in Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$ in the presence of longer-range interactions
• Hidden anomalous Hall effect in Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$ with chiral superconductivity dominated by the Ru $d_{xy}$ orbital
• Possibility of mixed helical p-wave pairings in Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$
• Degeneracy between even- and odd-parity superconductivity in the quasi-1D Hubbard model and implications for Sr2RuO4
• Enhanced chiral edge currents and orbital magnetic moment in chiral $d$-wave superconductors from mesoscopic finite-size effects
• Detecting chiral pairing and topological superfluidity using circular dichroism
• Interband interference effects at the edge of a multiband chiral p-wave superconductor
• Evolution of the filamentary 3-Kelvin phase in Pb-Ru-Sr2RuO4 Josephson junctions
• Laser pulse probe of chirality of Cooper pairs
• Even odder after twenty-three years: the superconducting order parameter puzzle of Sr2RuO4
• Examining the possibility of chiral superconductivity in Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$ and other compounds via applied supercurrent
• Exotic Topological Phenomena in Chiral Superconducting States on Doped Quantum Spin Hall Insulators with Honeycomb Lattices
• Designing edge currents using mesoscopic patterning in chiral d-wave superconductors
• Vortices in Two-Dimensional Chiral Superfluids
• Quantum theory for edge current and noise in two-dimensional topological superconductors