Leggett, A. J. Majorana fermions in condensed-matter physics. (English) Zbl 1347.81074 Int. J. Mod. Phys. B 30, No. 19, Article ID 1630012, 11 p. (2016). Summary: It is an honor and a pleasure to have been invited to give a talk in this conference celebrating the memory of the late Professor Abdus Salam. To my regret, I did not know Professor Salam personally, but I am very aware of his work and of his impact on my area of specialization, condensed matter physics, both intellectually through his ideas on spontaneously broken symmetry and more practically through his foundation of the ICTP. Since I assume that most of this audience are not specialized in condensed-matter physics, I thought I would talk about one topic which to some extent bridges this field and the particle-physics interests of Salam, namely Majorana fermions (M.F.s). However, as we shall see, the parallels which are often drawn in the current literature may be a bit too simplistic. I will devote most of this talk to a stripped-down exposition of the current orthodoxy concerning M.F.s. in condensed-matter physics and their possible applications to topological quantum computing (TQC), and then at the end briefly indicate why I believe this orthodoxy may be seriously misleading. Cited in 4 Documents MSC: 81V05 Strong interaction, including quantum chromodynamics 81P68 Quantum computation 81T45 Topological field theories in quantum mechanics 81T80 Simulation and numerical modelling (quantum field theory) (MSC2010) 81R05 Finite-dimensional groups and algebras motivated by physics and their representations 20B30 Symmetric groups 82D20 Statistical mechanics of solids Keywords:Majorana fermions; anyons; topological quantum computing; \(p+ip\) state PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{A. J. Leggett}, Int. J. Mod. Phys. B 30, No. 19, Article ID 1630012, 11 p. (2016; Zbl 1347.81074) Full Text: DOI References: [1] 1. E. Majorana, Nuovo Cimento14, 171 (1937) (in Italian). genRefLink(16, ’S0217979216300127BIB001’, ’10.1007 [2] 2. P. G. de Gennes, Superconductivity of Metals and Alloys (W. A. Benjamin, New York, 1966). [3] 3. A. J. Leggett, Quantum Liquids: Bose Condensation and Cooper Pairing in Condensed-Matter Systems (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006). genRefLink(16, ’S0217979216300127BIB003’, ’10.1093 [4] 4. M. Stone and S.-B. Chung, Phys. Rev. B73, 014505 (2006). genRefLink(16, ’S0217979216300127BIB004’, ’10.1103 [5] 5. J. Jang et al., Science331, 186 (2011). genRefLink(16, ’S0217979216300127BIB005’, ’10.1126 [6] 6. N. B. Kopnin and M. M. Salomaa, Phys. Rev. B44, 9667 (1991). genRefLink(16, ’S0217979216300127BIB006’, ’10.1103 [7] 7. G. E. Volovik, JETP Lett.70, 609 (1999). genRefLink(16, ’S0217979216300127BIB007’, ’10.1134 [8] 8. C. Nayak et al., Rev. Mod. Phys.80, 1083 (2008). genRefLink(16, ’S0217979216300127BIB008’, ’10.1103 [9] 9. A. J. Leggett, Majorana fermions in fermi superfluid: A pedagogical note, in Doing Physics: A Festscrift for Thomas Erber, Chap. 16, ed. P. W. Johnson (IIT Press, 2010), pp. 173-184. [10] 10. Y. Okuda and R. Nomura, J. Phys. Condens. Matter24, 343201 (2012). genRefLink(16, ’S0217979216300127BIB010’, ’10.1088 [11] 11. E. Taylor et al., Phys. Rev.91, 134505 (2015). genRefLink(16, ’S0217979216300127BIB011’, ’10.1103 This reference list is based on information provided by the publisher or from digital mathematics libraries. Its items are heuristically matched to zbMATH identifiers and may contain data conversion errors. In some cases that data have been complemented/enhanced by data from zbMATH Open. This attempts to reflect the references listed in the original paper as accurately as possible without claiming completeness or a perfect matching.