Screening Clouds and Majorana Fermions

Abstract

Ken Wilson developed the Numerical Renormalization Group technique which greatly enhanced our understanding of the Kondo effect and other quantum impurity problems. Wilson's NRG also inspired Philippe Nozieres to propose the idea of a large "Kondo screening cloud". While much theoretical evidence has accumulated for this idea it has remained somewhat controversial and has not yet been confirmed experimentally. Recently a new possibility for observing an analogous crossover length scale has emerged, involving a Majorana fermion localized at the interface between a topological superconductor quantum wire and a normal wire. We give an overview of this topic both with and without interactions included in the normal wire.