
Microsoft Creates Half-Electron Quasiparticle for Its Future Quantum Computer - grokys
https://gizmodo.com/how-will-microsofts-wild-electron-splitting-topological-1824142429
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gus_massa
They didn't create "half-electron". They created Majorana quasiparticles
inside a superconductor.

Majorana particles are weird because they are their own antiparticle, but they
are not "half-electrons". Moreover, probably neutrinos are Majorana particles,
but nobody is sure, and currently there are some experiments to try to prove
it.

~~~
eigenspace
Any Dirac 4-spinor can be formally decomposed into two independent Majorana
spinors, so yes a Majorana spinor May be thought of as half of a conventional
Dirac spinor.

On a 1D lattice this manifests itself in that one can formally decompose each
electron on the chain into two Majorana spinors.

This is a trivial relabelling if degrees of freedom in the bulk of the
lattice, however it reveals the possibility of topologically distinct states
on the boundaries of the lattice by leaving dangling bonds on the edge.

~~~
gus_massa
But the two Majorana particles in the decomposition are the Majorana particles
they are measuring, or they are different? In particular, if they join two of
the Majorana particles they are measuring, can they form an electron or they
get something bigger?

[This is a tricky question, because the "electrons" in a crystal are not
exactly the electrons in vacuum, for example they have a different effective
mass.]

Also, can they measure the charge of the Majorana particles using the Hall
effect or something, or trying to measure the charge destroy the
quasiparticle?

