Majorana Fermions in Equilibrium and in Driven Cold-Atom Quantum Wires

We introduce a new approach to create and detect Majorana fermions using optically trapped 1D fermionic atoms. In our proposed setup, two internal states of the atoms couple via an optical Raman transition—simultaneously inducing an effective spin-orbit interaction and magnetic field—while a background molecular BEC cloud generates s-wave pairing for the atoms. The resulting cold-atom quantum wire supports Majorana fermions at phase boundaries between topologically trivial and nontrivial regions, as well as “Floquet Majorana fermions” when the system is periodically driven. We analyze experimental parameters, detection schemes, and various imperfections