Properties of Majorana fermions in topological superconductors

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Year 2011 marked the centennial anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity -- the flow of electric currents without resistance below a certain temperature -- but in the worldwide race for finding superconducting materials at ever higher temperature, new superconductors continue to emerge. The discovery of a new class of materials that exhibit the so-called topological superconductivity and have a high potential for applications in nanoelectronics only few years ago has opened up a brand-new exciting field in condensed matter research and materials science. One of the unusual features of topological superconductivity that makes this field significant is the possible existence of Majorana fermions -- elementary particles which may hold a key to unravelling the symmetry that governs the universe, but remain hypothetical to this day. Creating Majorana fermions in condensed matter systems will be a breakthrough not only in fundamental physics, but also for computer technology, as Majorana fermions can be used to realise fault-tolerant quantum computation.