Properties of Majorana fermions in topological superconductors

2011年是超导（在一定温度下无电阻流动的电流）发现一百周年，但在世界范围内寻找更高温度下超导材料的竞赛中，新的超导体不断出现。就在几年前，人们发现了一类具有拓扑超导性的新型材料，这种材料在纳米电子学中具有很高的应用潜力，为凝聚态物质研究和材料科学开辟了一个全新的令人兴奋的领域。拓扑超导的一个不寻常的特征是马约拉纳费米子的可能存在，这是一种基本粒子，它可能是解开支配宇宙的对称性的关键，但至今仍是假设。在凝聚态系统中创造马约拉纳费米子不仅是基础物理学的突破，也是计算机技术的突破，因为马约拉纳费米子可以用来实现容错量子计算。

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.