Past Events

The idea of a Majorana fermion, that is a fermionic particle which is its own antiparticle, was originally conceived in particle physics, but in the last few years there has been enormous interest in detecting the analogous excitation in condensed-matter systems such as "topological superconductors". In this talk I will try (a) to explain and de-mystify the idea of a Majorana fermion in the condensed-matter context as it is currently conceived by the majority of the community, and (b) to indicate why I believe there may be a serious problem with this "established" picture.