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Current-driven reduction of topological protection in multichannel superconductors

Alfonso Maiellaro

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Phys. Rev. B 114, 204509 – Published 26 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/w78h-24wx

Abstract

We investigate the robustness of topological phases in a Kitaev ladder composed of two coupled superconducting chains under the perturbing influence of a finite charge current. By introducing an effective Hamiltonian depending on the quasiparticle momentum induced by the current, we show that the two-mode topological phase, present in the isolated ladder, is fragile against a finite current flux. To characterize this behavior, we combine bulk topological invariants with real-space diagnostics, including the edge-edge quantum conditional mutual information Iee, which provides an entanglement-based signature of topological order. We further distinguish the gapped class-D sectors from a current-induced gapless superconducting regime, which emerges when the upper Bogoliubov–de Gennes (BdG) branch crosses zero at generic momenta and the standard gapped topological invariant is no longer applicable. Our results provide an effective framework to describe how current injection and measurement processes can affect topological protection in superconducting nanostructures.

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. B 114, 204509– Published 26 October, 2026
  • Received 21 May 2026
  • Revised 17 July 2026
  • Accepted 13 October 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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