A NIMS MANA group theoretically demonstrated that the results of the experiments on the peculiar superconducting state reported by a Chinese research group in January 2015 prove the existence of the Majorana-type particles.
A research group led by NIMS Special Researcher Takuto Kawakami and MANA Principal Investigator Xiao Hu of the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI-MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) theoretically demonstrated that the results of the experiments on the peculiar superconducting state reported by a Chinese research group in January 2015 can be taken as a proof of the existence of Majorana-type particle.
The existence of Majorana particle was predicted in 1937 by the Italian theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana. Though it is fermion, it is equivalent to its own antiparticle. While its existence as an elementary particle still has not been confirmed today—nearly 80 years after the prediction, it was pointed out theoretically in recent years that quasiparticle excitations in special materials called topological superconductors behave in a similar way as Majorana particles. However, it is difficult to capture these Majorana particles in materials due to their unique properties of being charge neutral and carrying zero energy. There have been intense international competitions to confirm their existence.
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