Nanowerk December 13, 2021
Bosons, such as photons, tend to bunch together unlike fermions. Thus it was natural for researchers to assume that splitting bosons would be an insurmountable task. According to a team of researchers in the US (Dartmouth College, SUNY Polytechnic Institute) the interplay between dynamical metastability and nontrivial bulk topology makes possible emergence of Majorana bosons. This leads to a distinctive form of topological metastability, whereby a conserved Majorana boson localized on one edge is paired, in general, with a symmetry generator localized on the opposite edge. They argue that Majorana bosons are robust against disorder and identifiable by signatures in the zero-frequency steady-state power spectrum. Their results suggest that symmetry-protected topological phases for free bosons may arise in transient metastable regimes, which persist over practical timescales. However, confirmation of the Majorana boson would still require a laboratory experiment that observes the photon halves. The experiment could utilize existing or near-term technologies…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
