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arXiv · 1102.5367

Majorana Fermions in Equilibrium and Driven Cold Atom Quantum Wires

Liang Jiang·Takuya Kitagawa·Jason Alicea·A. R. Akhmerov·David Pekker·Gil Refael·J. Ignacio Cirac·Eugene Demler·Mikhail D. Lukin·Peter Zoller
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Abstract

We introduce a new approach to create and detect Majorana fermions using optically trapped 1D fermionic atoms. In our proposed setup, two internal states of the atoms couple via an optical Raman transition---simultaneously inducing an effective spin-orbit interaction and magnetic field---while a background molecular BEC cloud generates s-wave pairing for the atoms. The resulting cold atom quantum wire supports Majorana fermions at phase boundaries between topologically trivial and nontrivial regions, as well as `Floquet Majorana fermions' when the system is periodically driven. We analyze experimental parameters, detection schemes, and various imperfections.

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Liang Jiang, Takuya Kitagawa, Jason Alicea, A. R. Akhmerov, David Pekker, Gil Refael, J. Ignacio Cirac, Eugene Demler, Mikhail D. Lukin, Peter Zoller. 2011-03-02. Majorana Fermions in Equilibrium and Driven Cold Atom Quantum Wires. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.106.220402

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