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Majorana fermions

A quantum critical approach

Nature Physics volume 9, pages 695–696 (2013)Cite this article

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Coupling a single electron level to dissipative leads allows the study of unusual behaviour near a quantum critical point, including the fractionalization of the resonant level into two Majorana fermions.

For a half-century our thinking about the electronic behaviour of materials has been shaped by Fermi liquid theory, in which a system of interacting electrons acts as if it were made up of nearly independent 'quasiparticles'. This approach yields accurate predictions of the properties of metals and semiconductors, from thermal conductivity to dephasing. Yet for almost as long we have been preoccupied with the fascinating cases where this approach fails, including 1D wires, 2D electrons at high magnetic fields, and high-temperature superconductors above their transition temperature. One route to studying such non-Fermi liquids is to look near a quantum phase transition (QPT), where a ground state changes abruptly as a function of some control parameter1,2. Although the QPT occurs only at zero temperature, non-Fermi liquid properties near the transition point can sometimes persist up to room temperature.

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Figure 1: An electron (blue dot), asymmetrically coupled to two dissipative leads, tunnels from the quantum dot (represented by the central blue peak confined between two barriers) to the more strongly coupled lead, where it launches a bosonic mode.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lucas Peeters and David Goldhaber–Gordon are in the Physics Department, Stanford University, 476 Lomita Mall, McCullough Building, Stanford, California, 94305-4045, USA,

    Lucas Peeters & David Goldhaber-Gordon

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  1. Lucas Peeters
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  2. David Goldhaber-Gordon
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Correspondence to Lucas Peeters or David Goldhaber-Gordon.

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Peeters, L., Goldhaber-Gordon, D. A quantum critical approach. Nature Phys 9, 695–696 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2804

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