Preparing and probing atomic Majorana fermions and topological order in optical lattices

Abstract

We introduce a one-dimensional system of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice whose phase diagram includes topological states of different symmetry classes with a simple possibility to switch between them. The states and topological phase transitions between them can be identified by looking at their zero-energy edge modes which are Majorana fermions. We propose several universal methods of detecting the Majorana edge states, based on their genuine features: the zero-energy, localized character of the wave functions and the induced non-local fermionic correlations.