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A team including researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have published a substantial correction to a 2020 paper reporting evidence for exotic quasiparticles called Majoranas.Credit: Philip Davali\/Ritzau Scanpix\/AFP via Getty<\/p>\n
A key study1<\/a> claiming to provide evidence of Majorana quasiparticles has received an extensive correction five years after it was published in the journal Science. Two researchers who flagged the paper as problematic say that the correction isn\u2019t sufficient \u2014 triggering the latest dispute in a field dogged by controversy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Microsoft quantum-computing claim still lacks evidence: physicists are dubious<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n For decades, physicists have been compelled by the idea that ultracold electrons in microscopic devices could behave collectively to form quasiparticles resistant to noise \u2014 both environmental perturbations and the inherent atomic jostling that plagues all quantum systems. The resilience of these Majoranas could make them ideal candidates for forming qubits, the informational units in quantum computers that are analogous to bits in classical machines. Studies to prove their existence have come up short, although recent bold claims by technology giant Microsoft have drawn considerable scrutiny<\/a>.<\/p>\n In September 2018, a team led by Charlie Marcus, a physicist at the University of Copenhagen, who also worked for Microsoft at the time, posted a manuscript to the preprint server arXiv<\/a> that described a fresh approach to generate Majoranas. The researchers made nanowires of indium arsenide surrounded by a shell of aluminium. Applying a small magnetic field, they then measured electrical signals \u201cconsistent\u201d with pairs of Majoranas, one at either end of each wire. A year and a half later, they included theoretical simulations to justify their results, and the study was published in Science1<\/a>.<\/p>\n Two physicists \u2014 Sergey Frolov, at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, and Vincent Mourik, now at the Research Centre J\u00fclich in Germany \u2014 raised questions about the validity of the data, and in July 2021, Science applied an editorial expression of concern<\/a> to the paper to warn readers of potential problems. Now, Science is lifting that warning, and the authors are issuing a 20-page correction to the paper\u2019s supplementary material. News of the correction was first reported on 31 July by the technology news site The Register<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Copenhagen group looked for Majoranas with devices made of indium arsenide wires (green) wrapped with aluminium (blue), as shown in this coloured electron microscope image. Credit: Reprinted with permission from Ref. 1.<\/p>\n The authors say they are relieved by the outcome. \u201cIt\u2019s not really correcting any errors,\u201d says co-author Saulius Vaitiek\u0117nas, a physicist at the University of Copenhagen. \u201cWe are summarizing and providing additional information.\u201d Frolov, on the other hand, argues that the data in the paper do not give a full picture of electron behaviour in the team\u2019s devices and calls for retraction. \u201cI do not trust this data,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Jake Yeston, an editor at Science who oversees physical-sciences submissions, says that the journal decided not to retract the paper because there was not a \u201cclear, community-grounded view that it\u2019s obviously wrong\u201d. But, Yeston says, the lack of information in the original paper was a problem, and it has now been fixed. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be that a reader who wants to know what your protocol was has to go to your lab and talk to you,\u201d he says. \u201cThat should be in the paper.\u201d<\/p>\n Questioning the data<\/p>\n Thirteen years ago, Frolov and Mourik were authors on a different study in Science2<\/a> that reported evidence for Majoranas. But excitement around the result faded after researchers discovered that other mundane phenomena could mimic the quasiparticles.<\/p>\n When the Copenhagen team\u2019s manuscript was posted to arXiv in 2018, Frolov and Mourik were dubious so they requested to see all of the data. E-mails reviewed by Nature show that the Copenhagen group released more data in November 2020. The pair of critics analysed the information provided and concluded that the data were incomplete and contradicted the study\u2019s central claims. An internal inquiry by the university\u2019s physics institute, however, found \u201cno problems with the paper\u201d, and that the Copenhagen team had turned over all of its data. Unsatisfied, editors at Science applied an expression of concern to the paper, and in October 2021, Yeston filed a complaint with the university to request an \u201cindependent, transparent investigation by experts\u201d.<\/p>\n Evidence of elusive Majorana particle dies \u2014 but computing hope lives on<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n In June 2022, the university assembled a panel of independent physicists to undertake the effort: Sophie Gu\u00e9ron, at the University of Paris-Saclay; Allan MacDonald, at the University of Texas at Austin; and Pertti Hakonen, at Aalto University in Finland. They travelled to Copenhagen, conducted interviews and examined data from 60 microscopic devices (the original paper included data from 4). Their year-long investigation3<\/a> found no misconduct, but stated that the team\u2019s selection of data led to \u201cconclusions that did not adequately capture the variability of outcomes\u201d. The excluded data, however, did not undermine the paper\u2019s main conclusions, they said.<\/p>\n One sticking point for Frolov and Mourik continues to be the Copenhagen team\u2019s choice of \u2018tunnelling regime\u2019 \u2014 the range of low electrical conductivities over which the devices were scanned. The Copenhagen researchers said they saw signs of Majoranas persisting \u201cthroughout\u201d their chosen tunnelling regime. But Frolov and Mourik said that the extra data they received showed that the tunnelling regime was much wider, and that the telltale Majorana signs were limited to the smaller tunnelling window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A team including researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have published a substantial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[262],"tags":[314,18,1099,19,17,1100,1098,133,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-32007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-computing","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-multidisciplinary","14":"tag-quantum-physics","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/d41586-025-02587-7_51339780.jpg\"\/)
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