Topological Field Theory for p-wave Superconductors


Hans Hansson




Wednesday, 16 May 2012, 10:30
Matfys library

Abstract:
In this talk I will first give a short background to topological field theories for superconductors and then present resent results on a proposed a topological field theory for a spinless 2D chiral superconductor that contains fundamental Majorana fields. Due to a fermionic gauge symmetry, the Majorana modes survive asdynamical degrees of freedom only at magnetic vortex cores, and on edges. These modes havethe topological properties pertinent to a p-wave superconductor including the non-abelian braidingstatistics. I also briefly discuss the connection to the Moore-Read Pfaffian quantum Hall state,and extensions to the spin-full case and to 3D topological superconductors.