Majorana gets an iron twist

• 来源期刊: 国家科学评论（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2019,（2）
• 页码范围: 195-197
• 页数: 3页
• 语种: 英文
• DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwy143

摘要

A magical coincidence of condensedmatter physics occurred in 2008.In February of that year, a new kind of high-Tc (26 K) superconductivity was reported in the fluorine-doped iron-based superconductor (FeSC)La[O1-xFx]FeAs [1], starting the'Iron Age'of superconductivity.In the following April, a 3D topological insulator (TI) was verified in Bi-Sb alloy [2], triggering a worldwide wave of searching for more 3D TI materials.A little earlier, in that March, a new hope was also raised in the Majorana community.An ingenious idea was proposed by Fu and Kane [3]for creating self-conjugate Majorana bound states (MBSs), a condensed matter version of the famous Majorana fermion, in a TI/s-wave superconductor heterostructure, which is much easier to realize in experiments than the previously proposed p-wave superconductor platform.These topics soon became three major rivers in condensed-matter physics, and they come together with the recent discovery of topological band structure and Majorana bound states in a simple FeSC.