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Majorana fermions were first proposed by the physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937. They are fermion particles that are also their own antiparticles. These fermions are vital to the research of superconducting materials and topological quantum computation. However, 80 years later, scientists have not found a Majorana elementary particle. Though it is hypothesized that neutrinos are Majorana fermions, there is still no evidence to support this conjecture.
In condensed matter physics, scientists found that a particlular kind of quasiparticle—Majorana zero modes (MZMs)—have characteristics similar to Majorana fermions. Recently, a research team from the Key Laboratory of Quantum Information of the Chinese Academy of Sciences achieved the fabrication and manipulation of MZMs in an optical simulator.
The team led by Professors LI Chuangfeng, XU Jinshi, and HAN Yongjian implemented the exchange of two MZMs such that the non-Abelian statistics of MZMs are supported. This work is published in Nature Communications on October 25th.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Tuesday November 01 2016, @02:27PM
Euh..
try this:
Pauli exclusion principle [wikipedia.org]
for explanation of Fermion.
Electrons and Protons are Fermions. Orbiting an atom, you find electrons alone or in pairs (spin up/spin down) but never more than 2 in each orbital wavefunction (consider it as sets of 3D-symmetric standing waves, looks a bit like citrus fruit slices):
atomic orbitals [wikipedia.org]. One such atomic orbital describes the probability density of finding an electron "bound" to an atom, somewhere near that atom. Of course it can be anywhere, but the probability tapers off exponentially with distance. So that's for the special case of electrons near atomic nuclei, i.e. matter. Physicists study all this in a much more general sense, and like to keep the original complex wavefunctions.
Now it turns out it doesn't need to be an actual particle; it can be a bit of space forced to behave like a Fermion particle. That is what was theorized by Majorana: states of matter at the surface of a solid, that behave as if they are a new kind of particle.
Majorana fermion [wikipedia.org].