Netherlands group may have detected elusive quantum particle

Nature : Researchers at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands may be the first to have detected the long-sought Majorana fermion , which acts as its own antiparticle. Majorana fermions are not necessarily individual particles like electrons or protons. Quasiparticles—collective excitations of groups of particles—can also qualify as Majorana fermions. Leo Kouwenhoven presented the group’s findings yesterday at the American Physical Society’s March meeting in Boston. In their apparatus, the researchers connected indium antimonide nanowires to a circuit with a gold contact at one end and a slice of superconductor at the other. They then exposed the nanowires to a moderately strong magnetic field. Their measurements of the nanowires’ electrical conductance showed a peak at zero voltage that is consistent with the formation of a pair of Majorana quasiparticles, one at either end of the region of the nanowire in contact with the superconductor, writes Eugenie Samuel Reich for Nature. If the Majorana fermions the group created prove to be sufficiently long-lived, they could serve as the bits in quantum computers.