Hunting for Majoranas
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- from Shaastra :: vol 02 issue 03 :: May - Jun 2023
Why is the scientific community so eager to look for the reclusive Majorana modes?
Majorana fermions were first proposed by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937 as possible neutral fermions – a class of elementary particles that include protons and electrons – that could behave as their own anti-particles. So far, there has been no evidence for such particles in nature. In the past couple of decades, however, Ettore Majorana's ideas have been extended into other fields of physics, particularly to condensed matter physics. This is because physicists feel that superconductors may be the key to hosting such particles, which can be their own anti-particles.
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