arXiv:1012.5761 · Physical Review Letters
Probing Non-Abelian Statistics of Majorana Fermions in Ultracold Atomic Superfluid
Shi-Liang Zhu, L.-B. Shao, Z. D. Wang, L.-M. Duan
Abstract
We propose an experiment to directly probe the non-abelian statistics of Majorana fermions by braiding them in an s-wave superfluid of ultracold atoms. We show that different orders of braiding operations give orthogonal output states that can be distinguished through Raman spectroscopy. Realization of Majorana states in an s-wave superfluid requires strong spin-orbital coupling and a controllable Zeeman field in the perpendicular direction. We present a simple laser configuration to generate the artificial spin-orbital coupling and the required Zeeman field in the dark-state subspace.