Speaker: Xiong-Jun Liu (刘雄军) (International Center for Quantum Materials, Peking University)

Time: October 12, 2017 16:00

Place: 郑裕彤讲堂

The search for non-Abelian Majorana zero modes has become a most exciting research activity in condensed matter physics and also ultracold atoms in the recent decade. The studies advance our understanding of the fundamental physics in quantum matter and push forward the potential applications of such exotic states to topological quantum computation. In this colloquium I will review the recent progresses of search for Majorana modes and introduce our results in this topic. After a pedagogical introduction to the fundamentals of Majorana modes, I will introduce the experimental schemes for realization, focusing on the topological superconductors realized in spin-orbit coupled systems. The similar processes in ultracold atoms will also be assessed. Then I discuss the observation of Majorana modes, introduce the recent experimental studies, and point out challenges. Finally, we present a generic theory for the realization of non-Abelian Majorana modes, with which we show that such exotic modes can be obtained in much broader range of superconducting systems, topological or even trivial. Future issues in this exciting direction will be discussed.

About the speaker:

Xiong-Jun Liu graduated with Ph.D in Texas A&M University in 2011. After working as a postdoctoral fellow in University of Maryland, Hong Kong University of Sci & Tech, and MIT from 2011 to 2014, he joined the faculty of International Center for Quantum Materials at Peking University. His research interests include both condensed matter theory and ultracold atoms, focused on topological quantum matter. He has published over 45 papers, with most of them being published in Science, Nature journals, PRX, PRL, etc.