Quantum leap: scientists skeptical of Microsoft's invention of a new state of matter

Microsoft's claims about a potential breakthrough in quantum computing and the creation of a new state of matter have created backlash from physicists who question the claim's veracity. While the company's researchers stand by their assessments, similar ones were ultimately rescinded the last time Microsoft made them. That puts a heavier burden of proof on the company this time around.

'Fraught history of similar claims'

Microsoft's announcement about its supposed breakthrough was "met with skepticism from some physicists in the field," said Salon. Some say that the Microsoft research team did not include all the data in the research paper published in Nature to prove that this form of quantum computing could work. And due to a "fraught history of similar claims from the company being disputed and ultimately rescinded, some are extra wary of the results."

This is not the first time the company has faced pushback while presenting findings in the field of quantum computing. In 2018, Microsoft reported in a research paper that it had detected the presence of Majorana zero-modes, special zero-energy quasiparticles. Nature eventually retracted the paper after it was scrutinized in a report from independent experts. Four physicists not involved in the original study concluded it was unlikely Microsoft had intentionally misrepresented the data. Instead, the company seemed "caught up in the excitement of the moment."

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While the more recent paper describes the structure and architecture that could be used to build a topological quantum computer, Microsoft "cannot show" it can "really operate it," Jelena Klinovaja, a theoretical physicist at the University of Basel, said to Salon.

'Essentially a fraudulent project'

There were concerns about the absence of a test Microsoft should have used to look for Majoranas, the "so-far undiscovered quasiparticles arising from the collective behavior of electrons," Nature said. The test, known as the topological gap protocol (TGP), was not mentioned in Microsoft's February announcement, Henry Legg, a theoretical physicist at the University of St Andrews, said in a recent critique. "Since the TGP is flawed, the very foundations of the qubit (quantum bit) are not there," said Legg.

The critiques went on. Vincent Mourik, a German experimental physicist, and Sergey Frolov, a University of Pittsburgh professor of physics and astronomy, made a YouTube video criticizing the "distractions caused by unreliable scientific claims from Microsoft Quantum." Concerns about Microsoft's claims "go back quite a number of years," so the reaction has not "just been triggered by this announcement per se," Frolov said to The Register.

While the scientific community remains skeptical, Microsoft is "sticking to its guns," said Laptop Mag. In the year since the paper's submission and publication, the company has made more progress with its topological qubits, the quantum bits that would power Microsoft's proposed chips, said Microsoft researcher Chetan Nayak on a blog forum.

Nayak doubled down on the claims his team made in the paper during a talk last week at the American Physical Society's Global Physics Summit. He remained "collected and convinced that his team has tamed the elusive Majoranas," even as "Legg and other physicists denounce Microsoft's claims," said Science. "We have only revealed a tiny fraction of what we've done," Nayak said to Science. Going forward, it will look "more and more convincing that this is going to be the basis of a technology."