Kitaev ring threaded by a magnetic flux: Topological gap, Anderson localization of quasiparticles, and divergence of supercurrent derivative

We study a superconducting Kitaev ring pierced by a magnetic flux, with and without disorder, in a quantum ring configuration, and in a rf-SQUID one, where a weak link is present. In the rf-SQUID configuration, in the topological phase, the supercurrent shows jumps at specific values of the flux Φ*=hc/e(1/4+n), with n∈N. In the thermodynamic limit Φ* are constant inside the topological phase, independently of disorder, and we analytically predict this fact using a perturbative approach in the weak-link coupling. The weak link breaks the topological ground-state degeneracy, and opens a spectral gap for Φ≠Φ*, that vanishes at Φ* with a cusp providing the current jump. Looking at the quasiparticle excitations, we see that they are Anderson localized, so they cannot carry a resistive contribution to the current, and the localization length shows a peculiar behavior at a flat-band point for the quasiparticles. In the absence of disorder, we analytically and numerically find that the chemical-potential derivative of the supercurrent logarithmically diverges at the topological-to-trivial transition, in agreement with the transition being of the second order.