Emergence of Majorana Fermions in Condensed Matter Physics
by
Domenico Giuliano(CS)
→
Europe/Rome
Library (GSSI)
Library
GSSI
V.le F. Crispi 7
Description
Majorana fermions, a fermionic particle which cohincides with its own antiparticle, was originally proposed by Ettore Majorana in 1937. Today, besides being regarded as possible candidates for describing neutrinos (which would for instance yield the possibility of a neutrinoless beta decay), Majorana fermions have been predicted to emerge as collective excitations in pertinently designed condensed-matter systems. This recent proposal has eventually led to engineering transport experiments that appear to have already detected possible signatures of the existence of such excitations at the interface between a conductor and a p-wave superconductor. In this seminar I will review the basic features of some models of condensed-matter systems that have been predicted to host Majorana-fermion like excitations, by also briefly discussing about their possible experimental implementation, with particular focus onto transport experiment across SN-junctions expected to host localized Majorana fermions emerging at the SN-interface.
