Topological Quantum Criticality in Superfluids and Superconductors: Surface criticality, Thermal properties, and Lifshitz Majorana fields

Abstract

Time reversal invariant (TRI) topological superfluids (TSFs) and topological superconductors (TSCs) are robust symmetry protected gapped topological states. In this article, we study the evolution of these topological states in the presence of time reversal symmetry breaking (TRB) fields and/or sufficiently large TRI fields. Physically, one of the realizations of TRB fields can be internal spin exchange fields due to background magnetic ordering. We find that the fully gapped TSFs and TSCs are generically separated from other nodal states by various zero temperature quantum critical points that are characterized by generalized quantum Lifshitz fields with distinct scaling properties. These emergent Lifshitz fields also define finite temperature properties in quantum critical regimes. Moreover, for a certain subset of TRB fields, there exist a precursor to bulk transitions, where surface states can also exhibit quantum critical behavior near zero fields. The possibility for a fully gapped TSF/TSC to smoothly crossover into a topologically trivial state without a phase transition is also examined.

20 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Topological Quantum Critical Points in Strong Coupling limits: Global Symmetries and Strongly Interacting Majorana Fermions
• Euler--Chern Correspondence via Topological Superconductivity
• Dynamic critical exponents as an emergent property at interacting topological quantum critical points
• Equivalence class of Emergent Single Weyl fermion lattice models in 3 dimensions: gapless superconductors and superfluids versus chiral fermions
• Discrete global symmetries and dynamics of emergent fermions