Topological Superconductor Could Lead to Quantum Computing with Weird Fermions

With their natural insensitivity to decoherence, majorana particles, which are also called majorana fermions, have long been considered a promising ingredient for quantum computing, but the difficulty in obtaining and containing the illusive particles has limited their usefulness in quantum research. A team at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden has announced that they have developed a means for corralling majorana particles using topological superconductivity.

According to the announcement at Physics.org, “Majorana fermions are highly original particles, quite unlike those that make up the materials around us. In highly simplified terms, they can be seen as half-electron. In a quantum computer, the idea is to encode information in a pair of majorana fermions separated in the material, which should, in principle, make the calculations immune to decoherence.”

According to team leader and Chalmers professor Floriana Lombardi, “For practical reasons, the material is mainly of interest to those attempting to build a topological quantum computer. We want to explore the new physics hidden in topological superconductors—this is a new chapter in physics.”