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Comment by eigenspace

3 days ago

Huh? This has nothing to do with neutrinos.

The chip is literally called Microsoft Majorana 1

Indeed Majorana fermions are completely unseen/unconsidered outside of Neutrinos. In fact all Standard Model fermions except Neutrinos are proven to be Dirac fermions

  • The Majorana particles in Microsoft's set-up are "quasi-particles". They aren't really fundamental particles, but excitations in the system which behave (roughly, in some appropriate sense) like particles. They aren't neutrinos.

    • Quite confusing though

      > “There’s no slam dunk to know immediately from the experiment” that the qubits are made of topological states, says Simon. (A claim of having created Majorana states made by a Microsoft-funded team based in Delft, The Netherlands, was retracted in 2021.) The ultimate proof will come if the devices perform as expected once they are scaled up, he adds.

      https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00527-z

      1 reply →

  • You are confusing quasiparticles with fundamental particles. If we were to observe a Majorana topological state, this would have no bearing on the properties of the neutrino.

    Also to say Majorana fermions are not considered outside of neutrinos is a patently ridiculous and ignorant statement. There is absolutely nothing in physics to say the only particle that can possibly be Majorana is a neutrino. For example, there have been theories of Majorana dark matter which are a consideration of fundamental Majorana particles outside of neutrinos.