Fifteen years ago, an alternative technique to look for the elusive Majorana particles was conceived theoretically. But no one carried out the experiment, until now. Physicist Jianfeng Ge and his colleagues from the Allan lab of the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) have now successfully carried out the first measurements.

There are a few ways in which physicists can look for Majorana quasiparticles. The main approach is based on conductivity measurements, but that hasn’t provided the definitive results scientists hoped for. Therefore, Ge looked for a new approach. ‘Back when I was at Harvard, I talked to my colleague Eugene Demler about shot noise measurements that should be able to identify majoranas. He had theorised this fifteen years ago, but no one ever tried it. I thought it was promising so I convinced Milan Allan from the Quantum Matter group to do it. And now we have our first results.’

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Read the full scientific publication at Science Communications.