Carlo Beenakker

Title

Majorana Fermions in Topological Insulators

Abstract

Majorana fermions are spatially localized superpositions of electron and hole excitations in the middle of a superconducting energy gap. These unusual particles have been predicted to occur at the interface between a magnetic and superconducting electrode, in contact with a topological insulator, or at the end points of a semiconducting wire on a superconducting substrate. A single qubit can be encoded nonlocally in a pair of spatially separated Majorana fermions, in a way which is insensitive to decoherence but therefore also very difficult to read out. We will discuss a method to detect Majorana fermions using a quantum point contact and explain how a conventional flux qubit might be used to read out the state of a Majorana qubit.