Related papers: Colloquium: Majorana Fermions in nuclear, particle…
We show that a number of apparently separate extravagant Majorana's actions, including those connected with his disappearance are united by the invariant of behavior. It is based on "carrying into life" the principles of quantum theory. We…
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…
A Majorana fermion is the single fermionic particle that is its own antiparticle. Its dynamics is determined by the Majorana equation where the spinor field $(\psi)$ is by definition equal to its charge-conjugate field $(\psi_c)$. Here, we…
This year is the centenary of the birth of Ettore Majorana, one of the major Italian physicists of all times. In this note we briefly sketch a few biographical details about Ettore Majorana and introduce and discuss the main points of…
We report on theoretical courses by Fermi and Majorana, giving evidence of the first appearance and further development of Quantum Mechanics teaching in Italy. On the basis of original documents, we make a comparison between Fermi's and…
This agile small "book" (in Italian) is an introduction to the life and work of Ettore Majorana, the brightest Italian theoretical physicist of the XX century, regarded by Enrico Fermi as the best theoretician of his time in the world. It…
Between 1933 and 1937, the treatment of relativistic spin-1/2 particles, initially rooted in Hole theory, evolved into the modern framework of quantum field theory. This paper reconstructs the crucial stages of that transition by examining…
A concise discussion of spin-1/2 field equations with a special focus on Majorana spinors is presented. The Majorana formalism which describes massive neutral fermions by the help of two-component or four-component spinors is of fundamental…
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…
We analyze in some detail the course of Theoretical Physics held by Ettore Majorana at the University of Naples in 1938, just before his mysterious disappearance. In particular we present the recently discovered "Moreno Paper", where all…
A review of the known different methods and results devised to study the two-electron atom problem, appeared in the early years of quantum mechanics, is given, with particular reference to the calculations of the ground state energy of…
Due to the standard electroweak model we have become accustomed to think about a neutrino $\nu$ and its antineutrino $\bar \nu$ as distinct particles. However, it has long been recognized that the apparent distinction between them may be…
Majorana fermions, quantum particles that are their own anti-particles, are not only of fundamental importance in elementary particle physics and dark matter, but also building blocks for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Recently…
Unphysical particles are commonly ruled out from the solution of physical equations, as they fundamentally cannot exist in any real system and, hence, cannot be examined experimentally in a direct fashion. One of the most celebrated…
Majorana fermions are particles identical to their antiparticles proposed theoretically in 1937 by Ettore Majorana as real solutions of the Dirac equation. Alexei Kitaev suggested that Majorana particles should emerge in condensed matter…
We analyze in some detail the course of Theoretical Physics held by Ettore Majorana at the University of Naples in 1938, just before his mysterious disappearance. In particular we give an account of the recently retrieved "Moreno Paper",…
Recently, Majorana's spirit returns to modern condensed matter physics -- in the context of topological Majorana zero mode that represents a local half degree of freedom carrying non-Abelian statistics.In this paper, we investigate the…
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…
Are neutrinos with definite masses Majorana or Dirac particles? This is one of the most fundamental problem of the modern neutrino physics. The solution of this problem could be crucial for understanding of the origin of small neutrino…
This is a colloquium-style introduction to the midgap excitations in superconductors known as Majorana fermions. These elusive particles, equal to their own antiparticle, may or may not exist in Nature as elementary building blocks, but in…