Majorana fermions were first proposed by the physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937. They are fermion particles that are also their own antiparticles. These fermions are vital to the research of superconducting materials and topological quantum computation. However, 80 years later, scientists have not found a Majorana elementary particle. Though it is hypothesized that neutrinos are Majorana fermions, there is still no evidence to support this conjecture.
In condensed matter physics, scientists found that a particlular kind of quasiparticle—Majorana zero modes (MZMs)—have characteristics similar to Majorana fermions. Recently, a research team from the Key Laboratory of Quantum Information of the Chinese Academy of Sciences achieved the fabrication and manipulation of MZMs in an optical simulator.
The team led by Professors LI Chuangfeng, XU Jinshi, and HAN Yongjian implemented the exchange of two MZMs such that the non-Abelian statistics of MZMs are supported. This work is published in Nature Communications on October 25th.
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Tuesday November 01 2016, @05:42AM
Given the amount of Chinese "research" that has been discredited due to falsified data, I'll contain my enthusiasm until it can be replicated by someone else.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday November 01 2016, @04:57PM
How about we wait on all science till it's replicated? That's sounds like a reasonable thing to do, and replication is one of our greatest issues in science at the moment.
It's not like asking for replication is an insult or something.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.