ESPCI web site
Mercredi 13 Juillet 2016 14h
Amphi Holweck, Esc C
1ème etage
Spotting the elusive Majorana under the microscope
Topological superconductors are a distinct form of matter that is predicted to host boundary
Majorana fermions. The search for Majorana quasi-particles in condensed matter
systems is motivated in part by their potential use as topological qubits to
perform fault-tolerant computation aided by their non-Abelian characteristics.
Recently, we have proposed a new platform for the realization of Majorana
fermions in condensed matter, based on chains of magnetic atoms on the surface
of a superconductor. This platform lends itself to measurements with the
scanning tunneling microscope (STM) that can be used to directly visualize the
Majorana edge modes with both high energy and spatial resolution. Using rather
unique STM instrumentation, we have succeeded in creating this platform and
have observed the predicted signatures of localized Majorana edge modes. I will
describe our Majorana platform, the experiments to date, and the outlook for
further experiments on Majorana fermions in our platform