Related papers: Ettore Majorana and his heritage seventy years lat…
We give an accurate historical and scientific account of a previously unknown manuscript written by Ettore Majorana in French. The retrieved text deals with Quantum Electrodynamics by using the formalism of field quantization, and it is…
In 1932 Ettore Majorana published an article proving that relativity allows any value for the spin of a quantum particle and that there is no privilege for the half integer spin. The Majorana idea was so innovative for the time that the…
After a quick historical account of the introduction of the group-theoretical description of Quantum Mechanics in terms of symmetries, as proposed by Weyl, we examine some unpublished papers by Ettore Majorana. Remarkable results achieved…
In 1927, just after he obtained a full professorship, Enrico Fermi delivered his first course on Theoretical Physics at the Institute of Physics in Rome. The following year Edoardo Amaldi, Emilio Segre' and Ettore Majorana became students…
We comment on a recent paper announcing the discovery of a previously unknown publication of Ettore Majorana on the Thomas-Fermi atomic model. In pointing out that such a publication was not written by Majorana, we correct some…
The possibility that neutrinos may be their own antiparticles, unique among the known fundamental particles, arises from the symmetric theory of fermions proposed by Ettore Majorana in 1937. Given the profound consequences of such Majorana…
We report on the retrieval of the last missing papers of the "Senatore folder", given by Majorana to one student of his in Naples in 1938, just before his disappearance. The mentioned manuscript is conserved at the Domus Galilaeana in Pisa…
The 1937 theoretical discovery of Majorana fermions--whose defining property is that they are their own anti-particles--has since impacted diverse problems ranging from neutrino physics and dark matter searches to the fractional quantum…
The Majorana fermion: fermion that is its own antiparticle, was predicted by Majorana in 1937. No fundamental particles are known to be Majorana fermions, although there are speculations that the neutrino is one. Many proposed theories…
We give, for the first time, the critical complete text of a manuscript by Ettore Majorana, conserved in the same file of the lecture notes for his course on Theoretical Physics at the University of Naples. He probably refers to a seminar…
The mentioned article was written by Ettore Majorana, in a partially educational way, for a journal of Sociology; but he gave up publishing it (and threw it away). It appeared posthumous, thanks to Giovanni Gentile Jr. (the inventor of…
This purely recreational paper is about one of the most colorful characters of the Italian Renaissance, Girolamo Cardano, and the discovery of two basic ingredients of quantum theory, probability and complex numbers. The paper is dedicated…
The standard model of elementary interactions has long qualified as a theory of matter, in which the postulated conservation laws (one baryonic and three leptonic) acquire theoretical meaning. However, recent observations of lepton number…
We give, for the first time, the English translation of a manuscript by Ettore Majorana, which probably corresponds to the text for a seminar delivered at the University of Naples in 1938, where he lectured on Theoretical Physics. Some…
This short essay aims to offer a discursive presentation of three scientific articles by Ettore Majorana highlighting the fundamental importance of one of them - the last one - for the investigation of the intimate constitution of matter.…
We present and analyze in detail an unknown theory of ferromagnetism developed by Ettore Majorana as early as the beginnings of 1930s, substantially different in the methods employed from the well-known Heisenberg theory of 1928 (and from…
Whether there exist elementary particles having Majorana nature is one the fundamental open question that has persisted since the 1930s. The only practical experiments to test the Majorana nature of neutrinos is the search for neutrinoless…
Ettore Majorana, in his short life, unintendedly has uncovered the most profound problem in quantum computation by his discovery of Majorana fermion, a particle which is its own anti-particle. Owing to its non-Abelian exchange statistics,…
In Europe (e.g., in Italy), and in the States, the opinion is widely spreading that the negative consequences of modern progress are the fault of "Science". A lively debate on this topic took place among the famous writer Leonardo Sciascia…
Sicily has played an important role in the development of the new research area named "Econophysics". In fact some key ideas supporting this new hybrid discipline were originally formulated in a pioneering work of the Sicilian born…