I'm doing theorical research in the topological quantum computing.<p>The idea behind topological quantum computing is to utilize quantum materials whose low-energy physics looks like an error correcting code. Since these systems are very large (macroscopic number of atoms), the error rates are (theoretically) very low, ie the qubit is fault tolerant by construction, without any additional error correction. In reality, we do not know how good these qubits will be at finite temperature, with real life noise, etc.<p>Moreover, these states do not just occur in nature by themselves, so their construction requires engineering, and this is what Microsoft tries to do.<p>Unfortunately, Majoranas in nanowires have some history of exaggerated claims and data manipulation. Sergey Frolov's [1] twitter, one of the people behind original Majorana zero bias peaks paper, was my go-to source for that, but it looks like he deleted it.<p>There were also some concerns about previous Microsoft paper [2,3] as well as the unusual decision to publish it without the details to reproduce it [4].<p>In my opinion, Microsoft does solid science, it's just the problem they're trying to solve is very hard and there are many ways in which the results can be misleading. I also think it is likely that they are making progress on Majoranas, but I would be surprised if they will be able to show quantum memory/single qubit gates soon.<p>[1] <a href="https://spinespresso.substack.com/p/has-there-been-enough-retractions" rel="nofollow">https://spinespresso.substack.com/p/has-there-been-enough-re...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://x.com/PhysicsHenry/status/1670184166674112514" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/PhysicsHenry/status/1670184166674112514</a><p>[3] <a href="https://x.com/PhysicsHenry/status/1892268229139042336" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/PhysicsHenry/status/1892268229139042336</a><p>[4] <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.107.210001" rel="nofollow">https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.107.2...</a>