English

Topological Field Theory for p-wave Superconductors

Superconductivity 2012-11-12 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We propose a topological field theory for a spin-less two-dimensional chiral superconductor that contains fundamental Majorana fields. Due to a fermionic gauge symmetry, the Majorana modes survive as dynamical degrees of freedom only at magnetic vortex cores, and on edges. We argue that these modes have the topological properties pertinent to a p-wave superconductor including the non-abelian braiding statistics, and support this claim by calculating the ground state degeneracy on a torus. We also briefly discuss the connection to the Moore-Read Pfaffian quantum Hall state, and extensions to the spinful case and to three-dimensonal topological superconductors.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1105.5031,
  title  = {Topological Field Theory for p-wave Superconductors},
  author = {T. H. Hansson and A. Karlhede and Masatoshi Sato},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.5031},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

6 pages, Some explanatory text added, and the discussion of degeneracy on the torus reformulated

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:12:29.105Z