Dear Group Members,
Christina Kraus from Innsbruck (group of Prof. Peter Zoller) is
visiting Harvard this week and will present a talk on Thursday in
Aspuru-Guzik group. She will talk about Majorana fermions in optical
lattices, including a long introduction to Majoranas. Here are the
title and abstract:
When: Thursday, 9 August, 4:00 pm
Where: CCB Division Room
What: Talk by Christina Kraus
Title: Probing Atomic Majorana Fermions in Optical Lattices
Abstract: Topological phases of matter, as they are appear e.g. in
fermionic insulators and gapped superconductors, are not only of
fundamental interest in the theory of condensed matter physics, but
their understanding is also of central importance for the realization
of a topological quantum computer. Here, the topologically protected
zero energy modes, called Majorana fermions, serve as the basic
building blocks for computation. However, despite an intense
theoretical and experimental effort, mostly in the field of condensed
matter systems, the detection of Majorana fermions is elusive so far.
In this talk I will explain a different approach to this problem that
relies on the clean realization and manipulation of many-body systems
of cold atoms in optical lattices. Starting from a one-dimensional
lattice system whose phase diagram includes topological states of
different symmetry classes, I will explain how standard quantum
optical methods available in current experiments can be used to detect
the presence and number of Majorana fermions as well as to probe the
form of their wave function.
Best regards,
Sarah
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Sarah Mostame, Ph.D.
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Harvard University
12 Oxford Street, Room M104
Cambridge, MA 02138
email: mostame(a)fas.harvard.edu
http://aspuru.chem.harvard.edu/sarah-mostame/