Publication:
Majorana quasiparticles and topological phases in 3D active nematics

dc.contributor.coauthorHead, Louise C.;Negro, Giuseppe;Johnson, Nathan;Keogh, Ryan R.;Gonnella, Giuseppe;Morozov , Alexander;Shendruk , Tyler N.;Tiribocchi, Adriano;Marenduzzo,Davide
dc.contributor.departmentDepartment of Physics
dc.contributor.kuauthorCarenza, Livio Nicola
dc.contributor.schoolcollegeinstituteCollege of Sciences
dc.date.access2025-01-23
dc.date.accessioned2025-01-23T11:51:06Z
dc.date.available2025-01-23
dc.date.issued2024-12-19
dc.description.abstractQuasiparticles are low-energy excitations with important roles in condensed matter physics. An intriguing example is provided by Majorana quasiparticles, which are equivalent to their antiparticles. Despite being implicated in neutrino oscillations and topological superconductivity, their experimental realizations remain very rare. Here, we propose a purely classical realization of Majorana fermions in terms of three-dimensional disclination lines in active nematics. The underlying reason is the well-known equivalence, in 3D, between a [Formula: see text] local defect profile and a [Formula: see text] profile, which acts as its antiparticle. The mapping also requires proving that defect profiles transform as spinors, and activity is needed to overcome the elastic cost associated with these excitations, so they spontaneously appear in steady state. We combine topological considerations and numerics to show that active nematics under confinement spontaneously create in their interior topologically charged disclination lines and loops, akin to Majorana quasiparticles with finite momentum. Within a long channel, the phenomenology we observe resembles that of the Kitaev chain, as Majorana-like states appear near the boundaries, while a delocalized topological excitation arises in the form of a chiral disclination line. The analogy between 3D nematic defects and topological quasiparticles further suggests that active turbulence can be viewed as a topological phase, where defects percolate to form delocalized topological quasiparticles similar to those observed in the channel. We propose that three-dimensional active disclinations can be used to probe the physics of Majorana spinors at much larger scale than that for which they were originally introduced, potentially facilitating their experimental study.
dc.description.fulltextYes
dc.description.indexedbyWOS
dc.description.indexedbyScopus
dc.description.indexedbyPubMed
dc.description.issue52
dc.description.openaccessYes
dc.description.publisherscopeInternational
dc.description.sponsoredbyTubitakEuN/A
dc.description.volume121
dc.identifier.doi10.1073/pnas.2405304121
dc.identifier.essn1091-6490
dc.identifier.filenameinventorynoIR04473
dc.identifier.issn0027-8424
dc.identifier.quartileQ1
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2405304121
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14288/26773
dc.keywordsMajorana fermions
dc.keywordsActive nematics
dc.keywordsDisclinations
dc.keywordsLiquid crystals
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherNational Academy of Sciences
dc.relation.ispartofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
dc.subjectNATURAL SCIENCES::Physics
dc.titleMajorana quasiparticles and topological phases in 3D active nematics
dc.type.publicationtypeJournal article
dspace.entity.typePublication
local.publication.orgunit1College of Sciences
local.publication.orgunit2Department of Physics
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