2021/04/30 by Vincent P. Flynn, Emilio Cobanera, Lorenza Viola
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.stat-mech #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.127.245701
published as Physical Review Letters 127, 245701 (2021) · 6 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2021/12/10 · arxiv updated 2021/12/14
Majorana bosons, that is, tight bosonic analogs of the Majorana fermionic quasiparticles of condensed matter physics, are forbidden for gapped free bosonic matter within a standard Hamiltonian scenario. We show how the interplay between dynamical metastability and nontrivial bulk topology makes their emergence possible in noninteracting bosonic chains undergoing Markovian dissipation. This leads to a distinctive form of topological metastability, whereby a conserved Majorana boson localized on one edge is paired, in general, with a symmetry generator localized on the opposite edge. We argue that Majorana bosons are robust against disorder and identifiable by signatures in the zero-frequency steady-state power spectrum. Our results suggest that symmetry-protected topological phases for free bosons may arise in transient metastable regimes, which persist over practical timescales.