Introduction to Majorana Fermions in Condensed Matter & Interpretation of recent Experiments in SmB6 using Majorana Fermi Sea

Abstract

A pedagogic introduction will be given to: i) Emergent Majorana fermions and Majorana zero modes in certain condensed matter models and ii) Kondo insulators. This will be followed by discussion of a remarkable Quantum Oscillation Anomaly seen in recent experiments in SmB6, a Kondo insulator, by the Cambridge group [1], as providing evidence [2] for presence of Majorana fermi sea, in an unexpected place. We show a counter intuitive result that these Majorana fermions though neutral, exhibit Landau diamagnetism.

[1] B.S. Tan et al., Science, vol.349, pp. 287-29 (2015), arXiv:1507.01129 [1] G. Baskaran, arXiv:1507.03477