Leo Kouwenhoven

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Leo Kouwenhoven
Leo Kouwenhoven at the SingularityU The Netherlands Summit 2016 (29011185724).jpg
Leo Kouwenhoven in 2016
Born (1963-12-10) 10 December 1963 (age 60)
NationalityDutch
Alma mater TU Delft
Awards Spinoza Prize
Website qutech.nl/lab/kouwenhoven-lab/

Leo Kouwenhoven (born 10 December 1963) is a Dutch physicist known for his research on quantum computing.

Kouwenhoven grew up in Pijnacker, a village near Delft, where his parents ran a farm. After losing the admission lottery for veterinary medicine he decided to study physics at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). [1]

In 1992 he received his PhD cum laude at TU Delft; his promoter was Hans Mooij  [ de ]. In 1999 he became a professor at TU Delft. [1] In 2007 he received the Spinoza Prize, the highest Dutch academic award. In April 2012 his TU Delft research group presented experimental results that provided potential "signatures" of Majorana fermion quasiparticles. [2] [3] [4] These Majorana quasiparticles would be very stable, and therefore suitable for building a quantum computer. [5]

In 2018 his research group claimed to have proved the definitive existence of Majorana particles in a Nature publication. [6] However, the results could not be reproduced by other scientists, and the article had to be retracted in 2021 due to "insufficient scientific rigour". [7] [8] [9] [10] The researchers had excluded data points that contradicted their claims, with the complete data not supporting their conclusions. [11]

Personal life

Kouwenhoven has six sisters and is married to Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam professor Marleen Huysman. [1]

Related Research Articles

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Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, and The Hague, to the northwest. Together with them, it is a part of both the Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area and the Randstad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fermion</span> Type of subatomic particle

In particle physics, a fermion is a particle that follows Fermi–Dirac statistics. Fermions have a half-odd-integer spin and obey the Pauli exclusion principle. These particles include all quarks and leptons and all composite particles made of an odd number of these, such as all baryons and many atoms and nuclei. Fermions differ from bosons, which obey Bose–Einstein statistics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Delft University of Technology</span> Dutch university

The Delft University of Technology is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022, it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among the top 10 Engineering and Technology universities in the world. In 2023, it was ranked 2nd in the world in civil engineering, 3rd in the world in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and 3rd in the world in architecture.

In physics, an anyon is a type of quasiparticle so far observed only in two-dimensional systems. In three-dimensional systems, only two kinds of elementary particles are seen: fermions and bosons. Anyons have statistical properties intermediate between fermions and bosons. In general, the operation of exchanging two identical particles, although it may cause a global phase shift, cannot affect observables. Anyons are generally classified as abelian or non-abelian. Abelian anyons, detected by two experiments in 2020, play a major role in the fractional quantum Hall effect.

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In condensed matter physics, a quasiparticle is a concept used to describe a collective behavior of a group of particles that can be treated as if they were a single particle. Formally, quasiparticles and collective excitations are closely related phenomena that arise when a microscopically complicated system such as a solid behaves as if it contained different weakly interacting particles in vacuum.

The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) is a physical phenomenon in which the Hall conductance of 2-dimensional (2D) electrons shows precisely quantized plateaus at fractional values of , where e is the electron charge and h is the Planck constant. It is a property of a collective state in which electrons bind magnetic flux lines to make new quasiparticles, and excitations have a fractional elementary charge and possibly also fractional statistics. The 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Robert Laughlin, Horst Störmer, and Daniel Tsui "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations" The microscopic origin of the FQHE is a major research topic in condensed matter physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Majorana fermion</span> Fermion that is its own antiparticle

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Malotaux</span>

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Hoeks, Louis (6 March 2016). "'Op de boerderij leerde ik dat wegduiken geen optie is'". Financieele Dagblad.
  2. Bob Yirka (13 April 2012). "Researchers find possible evidence of Majorana fermions". phys.org. Retrieved 28 May 2024.
  3. "Nanowetenschappers vinden langgezocht Majorana-deeltje". engineersonline.nl (in Dutch). Retrieved 28 May 2024.
  4. Mourik, V.; Zuo, K.; Frolov, S. M.; Plissard, S. R.; Bakkers, E. P. a. M.; Kouwenhoven, L. P. (25 May 2012). "Signatures of Majorana Fermions in Hybrid Superconductor-Semiconductor Nanowire Devices". Science. 336 (6084): 1003–1007. arXiv: 1204.2792 . Bibcode:2012Sci...336.1003M. doi:10.1126/science.1222360. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   22499805. S2CID   18447180.
  5. Robert F. Service, Physicists Discover New Type of Particle — Sort Of, ScienceNOW, 12 April 2012
  6. Zhang, Hao; Liu, Chun-Xiao; Gazibegovic, Sasa; Xu, Di; Logan, John A.; Wang, Guanzhong; van Loo, Nick; Bommer, Jouri D. S.; de Moor, Michiel W. A.; Car, Diana; Op het Veld, Roy L. M. (2018). "RETRACTED ARTICLE: Quantized Majorana conductance". Nature. 556 (7699): 74–79. arXiv: 1710.10701 . doi:10.1038/nature26142. ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   29590094. S2CID   4613547.
  7. Zhang, Hao; Liu, Chun-Xiao; Gazibegovic, Sasa; Xu, Di; Logan, John A.; Wang, Guanzhong; Van Loo, Nick; Bommer, Jouri D. S.; De Moor, Michiel W. A.; Car, Diana; Op Het Veld, Roy L. M.; Van Veldhoven, Petrus J.; Koelling, Sebastian; Verheijen, Marcel A.; Pendharkar, Mihir; Pennachio, Daniel J.; Shojaei, Borzoyeh; Lee, Joon Sue; Palmstrøm, Chris J.; Bakkers, Erik P. A. M.; Das Sarma, S.; Kouwenhoven, Leo P. (2021). "Retraction Note: Quantized Majorana conductance". Nature. 591 (7851): E30. Bibcode:2021Natur.591E..30Z. doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03373-x . PMID   33686283. S2CID   232159790.
  8. "Landmark article by QuTech researchers under scrutiny". Landmark article by QuTech researchers under scrutiny | TU Delta (in Dutch). 19 May 2020. Retrieved 8 March 2021.
  9. Stan van Pelt (23 February 2021). "Hoe jonge onderzoekers het fundament wegsloegen onder de quantumdroom van een Delftse hoogleraar". de Volkskrant (in Dutch). Retrieved 8 March 2021.
  10. Brouwer, Piet; Ensslin, Klaus; Goldhaber-Gordon, David; Lee, Patrick (2021). "Nature paper 'Quantized Majorana conductance', report from independent experts". Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.4545812. S2CID   244959752.
  11. "Microsoft's Big Win in Quantum Computing Was an 'Error' After All". Wired.