Off-diagonal long-range order in the ground state of the Kitaev chain

Abstract

We study a one-dimensional Kitaev model with uniform phase gradient pairing term. We show that the gradient constant dramatically affects the phase diagram, which consists of topologically trivial and nontrivial phases, associated with Majorana edge modes. Based on the exact solution, a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS)-pair order parameter is introduced to characterize the phase diagram by its value and nonanalytic behavior at phase boundaries. We find that this order parameter obtains its maxima at the triple critical points, at which the pairing phase gradient suppresses the single-particle scattering process due to the coherent destructive interference. In particular, we show that the ground state at such a point possesses exact off-diagonal long-range order (ODLRO), in the thermodynamic limit. Our result provides an example of a gapless $p$-wave superconducting ground state possessing ODLRO.