Properties of Majorana fermions in topological superconductors

2011年是发现超导的百年纪念日，超导是指电流在某一温度以下无电阻流动，但在寻找更高温度的超导材料的世界性竞赛中，新的超导体不断涌现。就在几年前，一类具有拓扑超导特性并在纳米电子学中具有很高应用潜力的新材料的发现，开辟了凝聚态研究和材料科学的一个全新的令人兴奋的领域。拓扑超导的一个不同寻常的特征使这个领域具有重要意义，那就是可能存在马约拉纳费米子--基本粒子可能是解开支配宇宙的对称性的关键，但直到今天仍然是假设的。在凝聚态系统中创建Majorana费米子将不仅是基础物理学的突破，也是计算机技术的突破，因为Majorana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.