MilestoneHardwareDisputed

Delft team reports tentative Majorana signatures in nanowires

2012

Vincent Mourik and colleagues report electrical signals in semiconductor nanowires coupled to superconductors that they interpret as evidence for Majorana states. Similar signals can arise without these states; the experiment does not demonstrate a topological qubit.

Why it matters

The experiment brings proposed Majorana devices into the laboratory and exposes the challenge of distinguishing suggestive signals from evidence for topological qubits.

Zero-bias signals alone do not uniquely identify Majorana states; published models also produce them in nontopological wires. The related 2021 retraction concerns a separate 2018 paper, not this 2012 report.

Vincent Mourik · Kun Zuo · Sergey Frolov · Leo Kouwenhoven · TU Delft

See it on the timeline

Researchers propose semiconductor wires as a platform for Majorana states (Feb 22, 2010)
Researchers retract a 2018 Nature paper on signs of Majorana particles (Mar 8, 2021)

Sources (3)

arXiv (Mourik et al.) Signatures of Majorana fermions in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowire devices
Primary sourceApr 12, 2012

“In the presence of magnetic fields of order 100 mT we observe bound, mid-gap states at zero bias voltage. These bound states remain fixed to zero bias even when magnetic fields and gate voltages are changed over considerable ranges. Our observations support the hypothesis of Majorana fermions in nanowires coupled to superconductors.”
arXiv (Liu, Potter, Law and Lee) Zero-bias peaks in spin-orbit coupled superconducting wires with and without Majorana end-states
Challenges the claimJun 6, 2012

“We show that this system generically exhibits a (non-quantized) zero-bias peak even when the wire is topologically trivial and does not possess Majorana end-states.”
QuTech Timeline retracted Majorana papers
Primary source

“Two publications have been withdrawn because of irregularities in the data processing, selection and publication: Quantized Majorana conductance (Nature, 2018) and Epitaxy of advanced nanowire quantum devices (Nature, 2017).”

Added Oct 27, 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will review it.

Delft team reports tentative Majorana signatures in nanowires

Why it matters

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