To claim that it is a new quantum computer

Last month Microsoft announced, with pomp, that it made a new kind of case and used to create a quantum computer architecture that could give birth to machines “”Sarthak in years, capable of solving problems on industrial-fame,

But since then, the tech giants have come under fire from the researchers, who say that it has done nothing. “My belief is that the response to the expert physics community has been heavily negative. Personally, people are just angry, ”says Sergei Frolov At Pittsburgh, University of Pennsylvania.

Microsoft claims on elusive and foreign quasiparticles called Majorna Zero Mode. They can be used theoretically to create a topological quit, a new type of quantum bit – construction blocks of information processing within a quantum computer. Due to their underlying properties, such quints can excel in reducing errors, today all quantum in use addressed a major drawback of computers.

The MZM has been given theory to emerge from the collective behavior of electrons on the edges of thin superconducting wires. The new major 1 chip of Microsoft includes many such wires and, according to the firm, enough to create eight topological qualities. A Microsoft spokesman told New scientist This chip was “a significant success for our and industry”.

Nevertheless, researchers say that Microsoft has not given enough evidence to support these claims. With its press announcement, the company published a paper in the journal Nature It said that its results were confirmed. , Nature Paper marks confirm colleague-reviews that Microsoft is capable of not only making major major particles, which helps to protect quantum information from random disturbances, but can also measure that information strongly, ” A microsoft press release said,

But on editors Nature It is clearly clear that this statement is incorrect. A publicly available report on the Peer-Review process states: “The editorial team wants to explain that the results in this manuscript do not represent the evidence for the presence of Majrana Zero mode in the equipment reported.”

In other words, Microsoft and Nature They are directly opposing each other. “In the press release something different (compared to completely different ( Nature Paper), ”says Henry leg At the University of Andrews in Britain.

This is not the only unconventional aspect of Microsoft paper. Legg states that two of the four colleagues initially responded to significant and negative reactions, which in his experience, usually disqualifying a paper from publication in the prestigious magazine. The peer-review report shows that until the last round of editing, one reviewer still disagreed with the publication of paper, while the other three signed it. A spokes for Nature told New scientist The final decision to publish came down to the capacity that he had seen for the Microsoft’s device for the experiments with the future MZM, rather than what it had achieved so far.

It is also unusual that one of the critics, Hao jhang Leg says, at the University of Tsinghua, China, first worked with Microsoft on MZM Research. That work is published Nature In 2018, later retreated, to apologize for the team “Insufficient scientific hardnessOther researchers after identifying incomponions in the results. “It’s quite shocking Nature Leg says, one can choose a referee that was withdrawn only a few years ago.

Zhang says that there was no conflict of interests. “I have never been an employee of Microsoft, nor was I associated with (firm). Recently among 100+ writers of Microsoft Paper, I have worked first with three of them, ”he says. “He was seven years ago, and at that time, he was a student of the TU Delt (in the Netherlands), not Microsoft employees.”

Microsoft says that its team was not involved in selecting critics and was not known about Zhang’s participation until the review process was completed. Nature Standing with the decision, a spokesman stated that “the quality of the advice obtained can be seen from the comments of the critics”.

Review issues on one side, there are more fundamental objections for the functioning of Microsoft in both leg and frolov. Experiments with MZM have proved extremely difficult to perform in the last few decades, as the devices can produce flaws and disorders in the device that mimic Quasiparticals, even if they are not present. It is a challenge for researchers associated with Microsoft, in which the 2018 paper has been removed – the retraction notice clearly refers to the new insight related to the effects of the disorder. To address it, in 2023, Microsoft Published a process in the magazine Physical Review B The “topological gap protocol” is called, that it was claimed that these differences would have to be fed.

“The whole idea of ​​this protocol was that it is a binary test whether there is a major or not.” His Analysis of code and data itself Microsoft used to apply this protocol in 2023, however, it was shown to be less reliable than expected, in which data formatting changes were enough to fail in a pass. Leg says that he raised these issues with Microsoft before its publication Nature Paper, yet the firm has still used protocols in its new research.

NatureThe spokesperson of the magazine says that the editorial team of the magazine is “aware that some have questioned the validity of the topological gap protocols used in the subject. Nature Paper and other publication. This was an issue that we also knew during the colleague-review process. Through that process, the critics determined that this was not an important issue, saying the spokes.

Microsoft says it will respond to analysis of 2023 paper of leg if asked to do so Physical Review B. In Microsoft, Chetan Nayak said, “Criticism can be summarized as a leg to build a false straw man of our paper and then attack him.” He disputes the legs of the leg at several points and says that the 2023 paper “showed that we can make topical phase and Majorna zero mode with high confidence” and the new paper only strengthens those claims.

Microsoft spokesperson says that later in the year Nature The paper was presented for reviews, the firm has created that confidence and not only created a multi-quit chip, but also tested ways to manipulate those qualities, as is required for a working topological quantum computer. The spokesperson says that the firm will release further details at the Global Physics Summit of the American Physical Society. “We are ready to share additional data behind science as well as our results that are turning our 20-plas-year vision into a tangible reality for quantum computing.”

But for Froolov, it claims that incomplete results from the past may be ignored as the firm has gone to build more sophisticated equipment that rests on defective arguments. Leg shared the scene. “The basic problems of disorder and material science are not going just because you start making some hardcore equipment,” they say.