Martin Leijnse and three researchers from University of Copenhagen have received in total 10 million Euro for an ERC Synergy project called ‘Foundations of nonlocal and nonabelian condensed-matter systems'. Here, nonlocal means that quasiparticles encode a quantum state that is hidden from any local measurement, while nonabelian means that exchange of quasiparticles changes their joint quantum state in a nontrivial manner. Both these properties have been predicted and heavily studied theoretically for more than three decades, but they have not been demonstrated experimentally. Doing so is the aim of this ERC Synergy project, which will be based on creating and controlling so-called Majorana bound states - theoretically predicted to be both nonlocal and nonabelian - in semiconductor materials coupled to superconductors and exposed to a magnetic field.

Read the Lund University press release here (in Swedish), the ERC press release here (in English), the Swedish Research Council's pressrelease here (in Swedish), and about Martin Leijnse here (in English).