Flux-driven quantum phase transitions in two-leg Kitaev ladder topological superconductor systems

We investigate a two-leg ladder topological superconductor system consisting of two parallel Kitaev chains with interchain coupling. It is found that either uniform or staggered fluxes threading through the ladder holes may change the ladder system from the BDI class in the Altland-Zirnbauer (AZ) classification to the D class. After explicitly calculating the topological Z and/or Z2 indices and from the evolution of Majorana zero energy states (MZES), we obtain the flux-dependent phase diagrams, and find that quantum phase transitions between topologically distinct phases characterized by different number of MZES may happen by simply tuning the flux, which could be realized experimentally in ultracold systems.