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Abstract
摘要 |
Ettore Majorana wrote an important paper in 1937 introducing the concept of Majorana fermions which are their own anti-particles. Neutrinos may or may not be Majorana fermions. Then Majorana himself mysteriously vanished in 1938 and was never seen again. Recent work in condensed matter physics indicates that there may be a very exotic manifestation of Majorana particles in ordinary sysyems made of semiconductors and superconductors. Thus, Majorana’s hypothetical particles may have finally been found in solid state systems 75 years after their prediction. In my talk I will explain the meaning of the question posed in the title and provide an answer for the question through a critical theoretical analyses of the recent experiments searching for the non-Abelian Majorana mode in condensed matter systems. I will also describe the significance of the question/answer discussed in this talk in the context of topological quantum computation which is fault-tolerant as a matter of principle and does not require any quantum error correction. |
