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Microsoft’s Azure Quantum program has developed devices that can create quantum properties which scientists have imagined for nearly a century but have not been able to unambiguously produce in the real world — until now.
“What’s amazing is humans have been able to engineer a system to demonstrate one of the most exotic pieces of physics in the universe. And we expect to capitalize on this to do the almost unthinkable — to push towards a fault-tolerant quantum machine that will enable computation on an entirely new level that’s closer to the way nature operates,” said Krysta Svore, a Microsoft distinguished engineer who leads the company’s quantum software program.
“It’s never been done before, and until now it was never certain that it could be done. And now it’s like yes, here’s this ultimate validation that we’re on the right path,” she said.
Building on two decades of scientific research and recent investments in simulation and fabrication, the Azure Quantum team has engineered devices that allow them to induce a topological phase of matter bookended by a pair of Majorana zero modes. These quantum excitations don’t normally exist in nature and must be coaxed into appearing under incredibly precise conditions.
Scientists have sought to create and observe these excitations since they were first theorized about in 1937. More recently, they’ve realized that Majorana zero modes can play an important role in protecting quantum information and enabling reliable computation.
The Azure Quantum team has also been able to produce what is known as a topological phase and to measure the topological gap, which quantifies the stability of the phase.
