Dynamical generation of Floquet Majorana flat bands in s-wave superconductors

Abstract

We present quantum control techniques to engineer flat bands of symmetry-protected Majorana edge modes in s-wave superconductors. Specifically, we show how periodic control may be employed for designing time-independent effective Hamiltonians, which support $Floquet$ $Majorana$ $flat$ $bands$, starting from equilibrium conditions that are either topologically trivial or only support individual Majorana pairs. In the first approach, a suitable modulation of the chemical potential simultaneously induces Majorana flat bands and dynamically $activates$ a pre-existing chiral symmetry which is responsible for their protection. In the second approach, the application of effective parity kicks dynamically $generates$ a desired chiral symmetry by suppressing chirality-breaking terms in the static Hamiltonian. Our results demonstrate how the use of time-dependent control enlarges the range of possibilities for realizing gapless topological superconductivity, potentially enabling access to topological states of matter that have no known equilibrium counterpart.