Finding Majoranas, Nano-‘hashtags’ could be the key to generating the highly sought Majorana quasiparticle

Friday, November 17, 2017

UC Santa Barbara scientists are on the cusp of a major advance in topological quantum computing.

In a paper that appears in the journal Nature, Chris Palmstrøm, a UCSB professor of electrical and computer engineering and of materials, and colleagues describe a method by which “hashtag”– shaped nanowires may be coaxed to generate Majorana quasiparticles. These quasiparticles are exotic states that if realized, can be used to encode information with very little risk of decoherence — one of quantum computing’s biggest challenges — and thus, little need for quantum error correction.