Dissipative majorana quantum wires

Abstract

In this paper, we formulate and quantitatively examine the effect of dissipation on topological systems. We use a specific model of Kitaev quantum wire with an onsite Ohmic dissipation and perform a numerically exact method to investigate the effect of dissipation on the topological features of the system (e.g., the Majorana edge mode) at zero temperature. We find that even though the topological phase is robust against weak dissipation as it is supposed to be, it will eventually be destroyed by sufficiently strong dissipation via either a continuous quantum phase transition or a crossover depending on the symmetry of the system. The dissipation-driven quantum criticality has also been discussed.