
First sighting of Majorana fermion on a common metal - lelf
https://phys.org/news/2020-04-sighting-mysterious-majorana-fermion-common.html
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akjssdk
The big problem in this field is actually proving you have a majorana fermion.
In this experiment they measured a zero bias conductance peak, but this can de
caused by multiple other things as well. There are other detection methods as
well, but the ultimate prove is using two majorana's and "braid" them
together, thus forming a qubit. Doing this is much harder, but is also the
primary use case for majorana's, so it is necessary anyway. Until someone does
this with this system I would take this measurement as a strong indicator, but
not a real breakthrough.

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aey
> Now the MIT-led team has observed evidence of Majorana fermions in a
> material system they designed and fabricated, which consists of nanowires of
> gold grown atop a superconducting material, vanadium, and dotted with small,
> ferromagnetic "islands" of europium sulfide.

Material science is dope

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QuasiGiani
> nanowires of gold grown atop a superconducting material, vanadium, and
> dotted with small, ferromagnetic "islands" of europium sulfide

It's about effing time _they_ finally got their dizzy asses around to trying
this, eh? I've been so frustrated over the past few decades urging this
approach!

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ianai
It’s probably a funding and general engineering problem.

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twomoretime
I imagine they're hard to find because they annihilate each other. But they
probably have a nonlinear surface area function which is dependent at the very
least on interacting particle energies, so there's Hope for controlling them
if that's the case.

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spacetracks
Came here to say something like this. One big problem in the field is
detection. They are detected only indirectly using current methods. And there
are other particles that could trigger a detection. Majorana particles have
interesting properties in theory, but these properties have yet to be
validated. The most interesting, and useful for quantum computing, is the
ability for a pair of Majorana Fermions to "record", in the form of a qubit,
how many times they have been wrapped around each other. But this requires
having two, and being able to move them at will. Every new material we find
them in is a chance for success.

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DrAwdeOccarim
The article briefly touches on it, but could someone explain why Majorana
particles are ideal for quantum computing?

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spacetracks
Qubits are susceptible to all kinds of environmental noise. That's why current
designs are cooled to cryogenic temperatures. Certain kinds of Majorana
particles solve this problem by making the qubit distributed. In a handwaving
way, the 1 state of the qubit is on one end of a wire, and the zero state is
on the other; really there is a Majorana particle on each end of the wire, and
by manipulating them you can control the state of the qubit. To manipulate the
qubit you must interact with both ends of the wire at the same time. That goes
for noise as well. And noise typically acts locally, not in two places at the
same time, so the qubit is protected.

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DrAwdeOccarim
Very cool. Thank you for that! Is there an easy way to explain why you can't
do this with other particles but you can with Majorana particles?

