Patrick Lee, MIT "In Search of Majorana"

Date
Sep 17, 2010, 1:30 pm6:00 pm
Location
PCTS Seminar Room

Details

Event Description
Abstract:Majorana is a fermion which is its own anti-particle. Often described as half a fermion, it is expected to have novel braiding properties in 2D, but has never been observed in Nature. Proposals for realizing them in condensed matter center on making vortices in p+ip superconductors. We have found that the Majorana end states which was first proposed to live at the ends of strictly one dimensional systems are surprisingly robust and should be stable even in wide samples. We also propose a practical way to producing effective 2D p+ip superconductivity in thin metallic films utilizing surface states, which makes it feasible to produce Majorana end states and detect them.