Majorana Fermions in Equilibrium and Driven Cold Atom Quantum Wires

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel cold atom setup to realize and detect Majorana fermions using optically trapped fermionic atoms with engineered spin-orbit coupling and pairing, including in driven systems.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to create and detect Majorana fermions in cold atom systems with optical Raman coupling and BEC-induced pairing, including Floquet Majorana states.

Findings

Supports Majorana fermions at topological phase boundaries

Proposes detection schemes for Majorana states

Analyzes effects of experimental imperfections

Abstract

We introduce a new approach to create and detect Majorana fermions using optically trapped 1D fermionic atoms. In our proposed setup, two internal states of the atoms couple via an optical Raman transition---simultaneously inducing an effective spin-orbit interaction and magnetic field---while a background molecular BEC cloud generates s-wave pairing for the atoms. The resulting cold atom quantum wire supports Majorana fermions at phase boundaries between topologically trivial and nontrivial regions, as well as `Floquet Majorana fermions' when the system is periodically driven. We analyze experimental parameters, detection schemes, and various imperfections.