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TOPOLOGICAL MATTER

Conjuring Majorana with synthetic magnetism

Nature Materials volume 18, pages 1036–1037 (2019)Cite this article

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Majorana zero modes — useful for quantum computing — are revealed in carbon nanotubes by utilizing a synthetic spin–orbit interaction.

The goal of realizing a quantum computer may actually require creating and manipulating new quantum states in materials. One potential route to creating more robust quantum bits (qubits) relies on creating a topological superconducting state of electrons. A wire made of such a superconductor hosts an exotic quasiparticle at each end called a Majorana zero mode, named after the Italian physicist who first considered elementary particles that can be their own antiparticle. Majorana zero modes in these superconductors are indeed their own anti-quasiparticle, but they have other important properties that make them useful for quantum computing. They come in pairs, one at each end of a topological superconducting wire, and are predicted to have quantum statistics different to the familiar fermions and bosons. The non-local nature of these quantum states may allow us to create more robust topological qubits, while the exchange (or braiding) of the pairs could make fault-tolerant quantum computation possible. Writing in Nature Materials, Matthieu Desjardins and co-workers1 describe their realization of a topological superconducting phase with Majorana zero modes in the simplest and cleanest nanowire system that we know of: the carbon nanotube. Their work is made possible by subjecting the nanotube to an oscillatory magnetic field on the nanoscale, the control of which in the future could open the door to the manipulation and even the braiding of Majoranas.

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Fig. 1: Application of an oscillatory magnetic field to a superconducting nanotube.

References

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  1. Joseph Henry Laboratories and Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Ali Yazdani

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  1. Ali Yazdani
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Correspondence to Ali Yazdani.

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Yazdani, A. Conjuring Majorana with synthetic magnetism. Nat. Mater. 18, 1036–1037 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0477-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0477-2

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