Stretching the electron as far as it will go

Abstract

Effects associated with the existence of isolated zero modes of Majorana fermions are discussed. It is argued that the quantization of this system necessarily contains highly extended quantum states and that populating and depopulating such states by interacting with the quantum system leads to a long ranged teleportation process. Also leads to spontaneous violation of fermion parity symmetry. A quasi realistic model consisting of a quantum wire embedded in a p-wave superconductor is discussed as an explicit example of a physical system with an isolated Majorana zero mode.