Majorana Fermions in Equilibrium and in 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, and Peter Zoller
Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 220402 – Published 2 June 2011
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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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  • Received 26 February 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.220402

© 2011 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Liang Jiang1,2, Takuya Kitagawa3, Jason Alicea4, A. R. Akhmerov5, David Pekker2, Gil Refael2, J. Ignacio Cirac6, Eugene Demler3, Mikhail D. Lukin3, and Peter Zoller7

  • 1Institute for Quantum Information, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 2Department of Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 3Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  • 4Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA
  • 5Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, P.O. Box 9506, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
  • 6Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Strasse 1, D-85748 Garching, Germany
  • 7Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

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Issue

Vol. 106, Iss. 22 — 3 June 2011

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