The most important figure in the retracted 'Quantized Majorana Conductance' paper was Figure 2e. A tiny technical panel based on the same raw data as the infamous 'plateau'. What's the big deal? Read on...
First, let's take it in. You see how perfectly the red datapoints all line up at 1 (the quantized value). Members of the Academic Community already memed about it: even the totally commanding theory could not get so close to 1.
Another thing we noticed that was strange: if these data came from the 'plateau' trace, why so few data points? And also, how come in panel e they are all pinned to 1 but panel b from which they were taken shows about 10% scatter around 1?
The answer is - panel 2e is a result of data selection squared. They selected data from the already selected and manipulated data in figure 2b because those were still not perfectly at 1. We analyzed panel 2e in excruciating detail, please study that: zenodo.org/record/4587841
When we re-plotted Figure 2e without excluding datapoints and axis stretching, we found no plateau. Change in GN (the background) is the same as change in GS (the plateau). If GN is from negative bias you see especially clearly that a 'plateau' turns into an inverted 'U'.
Now, what is the importance of the tiny and derivative Figure 2e? It is a trap for experts. Whenever asked about charge jumps in Figure 2b, the authors pointed to Figure 2e which looks 'beyond' charge jumps replacing gate voltage on x-axis with background signal itself (GN).
After we took Figure 2e apart, the authors came up with new re-analysis, which they included in the replacement paper on arxiv since January. I am not going to debunk that. What is the point? It will just be replaced with even more creative arguments.
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I celebrate #PiDay2021 in my own way. To me pi will always be about this.
My first physics result: "Measurement of the Current-Phase Relation of SFS pi-Josephson junctions" with magnificent junctions from Chernogolovka, and experiments done in Urbana: arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0…
We also hunted second-order Josephson effect at 0-pi transition, where that randomly wiggling purple trace is. I did not find it. I remember Leggett asking 'why is he graduating?'. The team found it shortly after I left. But it took 10 years to publish! arxiv.org/abs/1805.12546