JOINT ICTP/SISSA COLLOQUIUM ON CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS Thursday, 5 May 2011 - 11:30 hrs

[del_rio]

 JOINT ICTP/SISSA

COLLOQUIUM

ON CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS

Thursday, 5 May 2011   -    11:30 hrs

 							Luigi Stasi Seminar Room

ICTP Leonardo Building - 1st floor



Carlo BEENAKKER

(Instituut-Lorentz, Leiden University)

"The search for Majorana fermions in topological superconductors"

 Abstract

 Majorana fermions (particles which are their own antiparticle) may or may not exist in Nature as fundamental building blocks, but in the solid state they can be constructed out of electron and hole excitations. What is needed is a superconductor to hide the charge difference, and a topological phase to eliminate the zero-point motion that would cause an energy difference. A qubit encoded in a pair of Majorana fermions is expected to have an unusually long decoherence time. We will discuss strategies to detect Majorana fermions in a topological superconductor, as well as possible applications in a quantum computer.

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Ms. Rosa del Rio
UNESCO-IAEA
The Abdus Salam International Centre
for Theoretical Physics
Strada Costiera 11- 34014 Trieste (Italy)
phone: +39-040-2240396
fax: +39-040-22407396