A team led by scientists and engineers at the 91自拍 has announced a significant advancement in developing fault-tolerant qubits for quantum computing. In a pair of papers published June 14 in Nature and June 22 in Science, they report that, in experiments with flakes of semiconductor materials 鈥� each only a single layer of atoms thick 鈥� they detected signatures of 鈥渇ractional quantum anomalous Hall鈥� (FQAH) states. The team鈥檚 discoveries mark a first and promising step in constructing a type of fault-tolerant qubit because FQAH states can host anyons 鈥� strange 鈥渜uasiparticles鈥� that have only a fraction of an electron鈥檚 charge. Some types of anyons can be used to make what are called 鈥渢opologically protected鈥� qubits, which are stable against any small, local disturbances.
