Prospecting for elusive Majorana particles in nanowires

We propose and analyze theoretically an experimental setup for detecting the elusive Majorana particle in quasi-one dimensional semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures. The experimental system consists of a quasi one-dimensional semiconductor nanowire with strong spin-orbit Rashba interaction proximity coupled with an s-wave superconductor. Under appropriate conditions, such system can realize a non-trivial topological state supporting Majorana zero energy modes localized at the ends of the wire. These emerging Majorana quasiparticles, i.e. particles that are at the same time their own antiparticles, are effectively fractionalized objects (anyons) obeying non-Abelian statistics. We discuss several experiments for detecting Majorana fermions in nanowires.