Majorana Zero Modes (Theory)

Alexei Kitaev's 2001 proposal that a 1D p-wave superconductor ("Kitaev chain") should host unpaired Majorana zero modes at its ends -- the earliest and most-cited theoretical route to condensed-matter Majorana modes (4,815 citations), predating Fu & Kane's independent, more experimentally-tractable 2008 proposal (topological-insulator/superconductor heterostructure, OpenAlex W2168226651, 4,925 citations) by 7 years. The 2012 nanowire experiment (below) more directly follows the Fu-Kane/Oreg-Lutchyn theoretical route than Kitaev's abstract chain model, even though Kitaev's is chronologically first -- a genuine multi-path precedence situation, not collapsed to a single "first" paper. Bare "Majorana fermion" is not a safe backfill term -- it collides badly with the unrelated particle-physics concept of Majorana neutrinos; a "topological superconductor" qualifier is required.