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Quantum computing’s reproducibility crisis: Majorana fermions

The controversy over Majorana particles is eroding confidence in the field. More accountability and openness are needed — from authors, reviewers and journal editors.
  1. Sergey Frolov

    1. Sergey Frolov is associate professor of physics at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

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A shadow has fallen over the race to detect a new type of quantum particle, the Majorana fermion, that could power quantum computers. As someone who works in this area, I’ve become concerned that, after a series of false starts, a significant fraction of the Majorana field is fooling itself. Several key experiments claiming to have detected Majorana particles, initially considered as breakthroughs, have not been confirmed. One recent case ended in a high-profile retraction from Nature (see Nature 591, 354–355; 2021), which I initiated with my colleague Vincent Mourik, a physicist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. We raised concerns after obtaining additional data from the original experiments that were not included with the published paper.

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Nature 592, 350-352 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00954-8

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