IAS Visiting Member Prof Patrick Lee introduces Majorana fermion, a fermion which is its own anti-particle, and discusses recent proposals to create and detect Majorana fermions in the laboratory.
Abstract
Majorana fermion is a fermion which is its own anti-particle. It can be thought of as half a fermion. If it exists, it is predicted to have fascinating properties such as non-abelian statistics and can serve as the basis of fault tolerant quantum computing. However, up to now it has never been observed in Nature. I will give an introduction to the subject and discuss recent proposals to create and detect Majorana fermions in the Laboratory.
About the Speaker
Professor Patrick Lee joined the MIT Department of Physics in 1982 after approximately ten years with the Theoretical Physics Department at Bell Laboratories. He has made key contributions to the theory of disordered electronic systems and is a pioneer in “mesoscopic physics,” the study of small devices at low temperatures. Professor Lee introduced the concept of universal conductance fluctuations to describe such devices. For this and other contributions to condensed matter physics, he was awarded the 2005 Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics and the Oliver Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society. Professor Lee was elected Member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1991. His current research interests focus on high temperature superconductors.
