Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1601.05790

How quickly can anyons be braided? Or: How I learned to stop worrying about diabatic errors and love the anyon

Christina Knapp, Michael P. Zaletel, Dong E. Liu, Meng Cheng, Parsa Bonderson, Chetan Nayak

Published Jan 21, 2016• 29 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Topological phases of matter are a potential platform for the storage and processing of quantum information with intrinsic error rates that decrease exponentially with inverse temperature and with the length scales of the system, such as the distance between quasiparticles. However, it is less well-understood how error rates depend on the speed with which non-Abelian quasiparticles are braided. In general, diabatic corrections to the holonomy or Berry's matrix vanish at least inversely with the length of time for the braid, with faster decay occurring as the time-dependence is made smoother. We show that such corrections will not affect quantum information encoded in topological degrees of freedom, unless they involve the creation of topologically nontrivial quasiparticles. Moreover, we show how measurements that detect unintentionally created quasiparticles can be used to control this source of error.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1601.05790

Related papers

Continuous error correction for Ising anyons

Adrian Hutter, James R. Wootton

Quantum gates in topological quantum computation are performed by braiding non-Abelian anyons. These braiding processes can presumably be performed with very low error rates. However, to make a topological quantum computation architecture truly scalable, even rare errors need to be corrected. Error correction for non-Abelian anyons is complicated by the fact that it needs to be performed on a continuous basis, and further errors may occur while we are correcting existing ones. Here, we prove the feasibility of this task, establishing non-Abelian anyons as a viable platform for scalable quantum computation. We thereby focus on Ising anyons as the most prominent example of non-Abelian anyons and show that for these a finite error rate can indeed be corrected continuously. There is a threshold error rate ${p}_{c}>0$ such that for all error rates $p<{p}_{c}$ the probability of a logical error per time step can be made exponentially small in the distance of a logical qubit.

arXiv:1508.04033•Physical Review A•Apr 18, 2016•11 citations

Braiding and Berry's Phases in Non-Abelian Quantum Hall States

If one could be built, a quantum computer would be capable of storing and manipulating quantum states with sufficient accuracy to carry out computations that no classical computer can do (most notably factoring integers in polynomial time). The greatest obstacle to building such a device is the problem of error and decoherence. Classical computers can exploit the physical robustness of ordered states to protect classical information (as in, for example, the magnetically ordered state of a hard drive). Remarkably, a type of quantum order known as topological order can, in principle, play the same role for quantum information. The best studied topologically ordered states are quantum Hall states. These states arise when a two-dimensional electron gas is placed in a strong magnetic field and cooled to low temperatures. Under the right conditions, the electrons condense into an incompressible quantum liquid whose excitations are particle-like objects with fractional charge (quasiparticles). Certain quantum Hall states are thought to be non Abelian. This means that when a finite number of quasiparticles are present and fixed in space there is a low energy Hilbert space with finite dimension, rather than a unique state. Unitary operations can then be carried out on this Hilbert space by adiabatically dragging quasiparticles around one another so that their world-lines sweep out braids in 2+1 dimensional space time. A quantum computer which stores quantum information in this Hilbert space and computes by braiding is known as a topological quantum computer. In this thesis I review our work on determining precisely how one would carry out a computation on a topological quantum computer. I focus on the so-called Fibonacci anyons--quasiparticles which may exist in the experimentally observed quantum Hall state at Landau level filling fraction ν = 12/5. I give explicit prescriptions for encoding qubits (quantum bits) using Fibonacci anyons, and show how one would carry out a universal set of quantum gates (the quantum analogs of Boolean logic gates) by braiding them. I then focus in particular on my work developing algorithms for performing brute force searches over the space of braids to find braids which produce unitary operations close to any desired operation. These brute force searches are a crucial part of our quantum gate construction, and I show that by using a so-called "load balanced" bidirectional search I can find braids which approximate any desired operation to an accuracy of 1 part in 10 5 . I then turn to my work calculating the Berry's phase obtained when quasiparticles are moved around one another in the Moore-Read state, a non Abelian state generally believed to describe the ν = 5/2 quantum Hall effect. This work is done using variational Monte Carlo, a method which allows one to numerically evaluate the Berry's phase for finite size systems. By exploiting certain properties of the Moore-Read state I have been able to study systems consisting of as many as 150 electrons. In so doing I have verified the conjectured connection between the Berry's phase produced by physically moving quasiparticles around one another and the mathematical phase one obtains by simply analytically continuing the quasiparticle coordinates. An added benefit of these calculations is that we can deduce the length scale which determines the size of the quasiparticles. This length scale dictates how far apart the quasiparticles must be in order to prevent errors when they are used for topological quantum computation.

•Jan 1, 2009•0 citations

Topological Quantum Computing with Majorana Zero Modes and Beyond

Christina Knapp

Topological quantum computing seeks to store and manipulate information in a protected manner using topological phases of matter. Information encoded in the degenerate state space of pairs of non-Abelian anyons or defects is robust to local perturbations, reducing its susceptiblity to environmental errors and potentially providing a scalable approach to quantum computing. However, topological quantum computing faces significant challenges, not least of which is identifying an experimentally accessible platform supporting non-Abelian topological physics. In this thesis, we critically analyze topological quantum computing with Majorana zero modes, non-Abelian defects of a topological superconductor. We identify intrinsic error sources for Majorana-based systems and propose quantum computing architectures that minimize their effects. Additionally, we consider a new approach for realizing and detecting non-Abelian topological defects in fractional Chern insulators. Topological quantum computing is predicated on the idea that braiding non-Abelian anyons adiabatically can implement quantum gates fault tolerantly. However, any braiding experiment will necessarily depart from the strict adiabatic limit. We begin by analyzing the nature of diabatic errors for anyon braiding, paying particular attention to how such errors scale with braiding time. We find that diabatic errors are unfavorably large and worryingly sensitive to details of the time evolution. We present a measurement-based correction protocol for such errors, and illustrate its application in a particular Majorana-based qubit design. We next propose designs for Majorana-based qubits operated entirely by a measurement-based protocol, thereby avoiding the diabatic errors discussed above. Our designs can be scaled into large two dimensional arrays amenable to long-term quantum computing goals, whose core components are testable in near-term devices. These qubits are robust to quasiparticle poisoning, anticipated to be one of the dominant error sources coupling to Majorana zero modes. We demonstrate that our designs support topologically protected Clifford operations and can be augmented to a universal gate set without requiring additional control parameters.While topological protection greatly suppresses errors, residual coupling to noise limits the lifetimes of our proposed Majorana-based qubits. We analyze the dephasing times for our quasiparticle-poisoning-protected qubits by calculating their charge distribution using a particle number-conserving formalism. We find that fluctuations in the electromagnetic environment couple to an exponentially suppressed topological dipole moment. We estimate dephasing times due to $1/f$ noise, thermal quasiparticle excitations, and phonons for different qubit sizes.The residual errors discussed above will necessarily require error correction for a sufficiently long quantum computation. We develop physically motivated noise models for Majorana-based qubits that can be used to analyze the performance of a quantum error correcting code. We apply this noise model to estimate pseudo-thresholds for a small subsystem code, identifying the relative importance of difference error processes from a fault tolerance perspective. Our results emphasize the necessity of suppressing long-lived quasiparticle excitations that can spread across the code.Finally, we turn our attention to a different platform that could host non-Abelian topological defects: fractional Chern insulators in graphene. We study the edge states of fractional Chern insulators using the field theory of fractional quantum Hall edges supplemented with a symmetry action. We find that lattice symmetries impose a quantized momentum difference for edge electrons in a fractional state of a $C=2$ Chern band. This momentum difference can be used to selectively contact the different edge states, thereby allowing detection of topological defects in the bulk with a standard four terminal measurement. Our proposal could be implemented in graphene subject to an artificially patterned lattice.

•Jan 1, 2019•2 citations

Shortcuts to non-Abelian braiding

Torsten Karzig, Falko Pientka, Gil Refael +1 more

Topological quantum information processing relies on adiabatic braiding of non-Abelian quasiparticles. Performing the braiding operations in finite time introduces transitions out of the ground-state manifold and deviations from the non-Abelian Berry phase. We show that these errors can be eliminated by suitably designed counterdiabatic correction terms in the Hamiltonian. We implement the resulting shortcuts to adiabaticity for simple protocols of non-Abelian braiding and show that the error suppression can be substantial even for approximate realizations of the counterdiabatic terms.

arXiv:1501.02811•Physical Review B•May 12, 2015•71 citations

Non-Abelian braiding of graph vertices in a superconducting processor

Google Quantum AI and Collaborators, Trond I. Andersen, Yuri D. Lensky +97 more

Abstract Indistinguishability of particles is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics 1 . For all elementary and quasiparticles observed to date—including fermions, bosons and Abelian anyons—this principle guarantees that the braiding of identical particles leaves the system unchanged 2,3 . However, in two spatial dimensions, an intriguing possibility exists: braiding of non-Abelian anyons causes rotations in a space of topologically degenerate wavefunctions 4–8 . Hence, it can change the observables of the system without violating the principle of indistinguishability. Despite the well-developed mathematical description of non-Abelian anyons and numerous theoretical proposals 9–22 , the experimental observation of their exchange statistics has remained elusive for decades. Controllable many-body quantum states generated on quantum processors offer another path for exploring these fundamental phenomena. Whereas efforts on conventional solid-state platforms typically involve Hamiltonian dynamics of quasiparticles, superconducting quantum processors allow for directly manipulating the many-body wavefunction by means of unitary gates. Building on predictions that stabilizer codes can host projective non-Abelian Ising anyons 9,10 , we implement a generalized stabilizer code and unitary protocol 23 to create and braid them. This allows us to experimentally verify the fusion rules of the anyons and braid them to realize their statistics. We then study the prospect of using the anyons for quantum computation and use braiding to create an entangled state of anyons encoding three logical qubits. Our work provides new insights about non-Abelian braiding and, through the future inclusion of error correction to achieve topological protection, could open a path towards fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Nature•May 11, 2023•108 citations

Twists in Topological Codes

Héctor Bombín

There exists a close relationship between topological quantum error-correcting codes and topological order in condensed matter systems. Indeed, a topological stabilizer code can be regarded as the ground state of a suitable Hamiltonian model, so that "wrong" syndromes correspond to excitations. These excitations are anyons, quasiparticles that carry a topological charge and exhibit exotic statistics. Anyon models can be symmetric under some permutations of their topological charges. One can then conceive topological defects that, under monodromy, transform anyons according to a symmetry. We call these defects twists. Twists give rise to new topological degrees of freedom in the ground state, useful as a quantum memory. Moreover, twists can be braided to perform topologically protected gates on these topological qubits. Thus, twists provide a new way to encode and compute with topological codes through code deformations. Because the properties of twists depend on the anyon model, codes with different anyon content give rise to different computational capabilities. E.g., in the well-known toric code a process where suitable twists are braided and fused has the same outcome as if they were Ising anyons. These are non-abelian anyons: braiding produces non-trivial gates on encoded qubits.

•Jan 1, 2016•0 citations
Topological phases of matter are a potential platform for the storage and processing of quantum information with intrinsic error rates that decrease exponentially with inverse temperature and with the length scales of the system, such as the distance between quasiparticles. However, it is less well-understood how error rates depend on the speed with which non-Abelian quasiparticles are braided. In general, diabatic corrections to the holonomy or Berry's matrix vanish at least inversely with the length of time for the braid, with faster decay occurring as the time-dependence is made smoother. We show that such corrections will not affect quantum information encoded in topological degrees of freedom, unless they involve the creation of topologically nontrivial quasiparticles. Moreover, we show how measurements that detect unintentionally created quasiparticles can be used to control this source of error.
Quantum gates in topological quantum computation are performed by braiding non-Abelian anyons. These braiding processes can presumably be performed with very low error rates. However, to make a topological quantum computation architecture truly scalable, even rare errors need to be corrected. Error correction for non-Abelian anyons is complicated by the fact that it needs to be performed on a continuous basis, and further errors may occur while we are correcting existing ones. Here, we prove the feasibility of this task, establishing non-Abelian anyons as a viable platform for scalable quantum computation. We thereby focus on Ising anyons as the most prominent example of non-Abelian anyons and show that for these a finite error rate can indeed be corrected continuously. There is a threshold error rate pc>0{p}_{c}>0pc​>0 such that for all error rates p<pcp<{p}_{c}p<pc​ the probability of a logical error per time step can be made exponentially small in the distance of a logical qubit.
If one could be built, a quantum computer would be capable of storing and manipulating quantum states with sufficient accuracy to carry out computations that no classical computer can do (most notably factoring integers in polynomial time). The greatest obstacle to building such a device is the problem of error and decoherence. Classical computers can exploit the physical robustness of ordered states to protect classical information (as in, for example, the magnetically ordered state of a hard drive). Remarkably, a type of quantum order known as topological order can, in principle, play the same role for quantum information. The best studied topologically ordered states are quantum Hall states. These states arise when a two-dimensional electron gas is placed in a strong magnetic field and cooled to low temperatures. Under the right conditions, the electrons condense into an incompressible quantum liquid whose excitations are particle-like objects with fractional charge (quasiparticles). Certain quantum Hall states are thought to be non Abelian. This means that when a finite number of quasiparticles are present and fixed in space there is a low energy Hilbert space with finite dimension, rather than a unique state. Unitary operations can then be carried out on this Hilbert space by adiabatically dragging quasiparticles around one another so that their world-lines sweep out braids in 2+1 dimensional space time. A quantum computer which stores quantum information in this Hilbert space and computes by braiding is known as a topological quantum computer. In this thesis I review our work on determining precisely how one would carry out a computation on a topological quantum computer. I focus on the so-called Fibonacci anyons--quasiparticles which may exist in the experimentally observed quantum Hall state at Landau level filling fraction ν = 12/5. I give explicit prescriptions for encoding qubits (quantum bits) using Fibonacci anyons, and show how one would carry out a universal set of quantum gates (the quantum analogs of Boolean logic gates) by braiding them. I then focus in particular on my work developing algorithms for performing brute force searches over the space of braids to find braids which produce unitary operations close to any desired operation. These brute force searches are a crucial part of our quantum gate construction, and I show that by using a so-called "load balanced" bidirectional search I can find braids which approximate any desired operation to an accuracy of 1 part in 10 5 . I then turn to my work calculating the Berry's phase obtained when quasiparticles are moved around one another in the Moore-Read state, a non Abelian state generally believed to describe the ν = 5/2 quantum Hall effect. This work is done using variational Monte Carlo, a method which allows one to numerically evaluate the Berry's phase for finite size systems. By exploiting certain properties of the Moore-Read state I have been able to study systems consisting of as many as 150 electrons. In so doing I have verified the conjectured connection between the Berry's phase produced by physically moving quasiparticles around one another and the mathematical phase one obtains by simply analytically continuing the quasiparticle coordinates. An added benefit of these calculations is that we can deduce the length scale which determines the size of the quasiparticles. This length scale dictates how far apart the quasiparticles must be in order to prevent errors when they are used for topological quantum computation.
Topological quantum computing seeks to store and manipulate information in a protected manner using topological phases of matter. Information encoded in the degenerate state space of pairs of non-Abelian anyons or defects is robust to local perturbations, reducing its susceptiblity to environmental errors and potentially providing a scalable approach to quantum computing. However, topological quantum computing faces significant challenges, not least of which is identifying an experimentally accessible platform supporting non-Abelian topological physics. In this thesis, we critically analyze topological quantum computing with Majorana zero modes, non-Abelian defects of a topological superconductor. We identify intrinsic error sources for Majorana-based systems and propose quantum computing architectures that minimize their effects. Additionally, we consider a new approach for realizing and detecting non-Abelian topological defects in fractional Chern insulators. Topological quantum computing is predicated on the idea that braiding non-Abelian anyons adiabatically can implement quantum gates fault tolerantly. However, any braiding experiment will necessarily depart from the strict adiabatic limit. We begin by analyzing the nature of diabatic errors for anyon braiding, paying particular attention to how such errors scale with braiding time. We find that diabatic errors are unfavorably large and worryingly sensitive to details of the time evolution. We present a measurement-based correction protocol for such errors, and illustrate its application in a particular Majorana-based qubit design. We next propose designs for Majorana-based qubits operated entirely by a measurement-based protocol, thereby avoiding the diabatic errors discussed above. Our designs can be scaled into large two dimensional arrays amenable to long-term quantum computing goals, whose core components are testable in near-term devices. These qubits are robust to quasiparticle poisoning, anticipated to be one of the dominant error sources coupling to Majorana zero modes. We demonstrate that our designs support topologically protected Clifford operations and can be augmented to a universal gate set without requiring additional control parameters.While topological protection greatly suppresses errors, residual coupling to noise limits the lifetimes of our proposed Majorana-based qubits. We analyze the dephasing times for our quasiparticle-poisoning-protected qubits by calculating their charge distribution using a particle number-conserving formalism. We find that fluctuations in the electromagnetic environment couple to an exponentially suppressed topological dipole moment. We estimate dephasing times due to 1/f1/f1/f noise, thermal quasiparticle excitations, and phonons for different qubit sizes.The residual errors discussed above will necessarily require error correction for a sufficiently long quantum computation. We develop physically motivated noise models for Majorana-based qubits that can be used to analyze the performance of a quantum error correcting code. We apply this noise model to estimate pseudo-thresholds for a small subsystem code, identifying the relative importance of difference error processes from a fault tolerance perspective. Our results emphasize the necessity of suppressing long-lived quasiparticle excitations that can spread across the code.Finally, we turn our attention to a different platform that could host non-Abelian topological defects: fractional Chern insulators in graphene. We study the edge states of fractional Chern insulators using the field theory of fractional quantum Hall edges supplemented with a symmetry action. We find that lattice symmetries impose a quantized momentum difference for edge electrons in a fractional state of a C=2C=2C=2 Chern band. This momentum difference can be used to selectively contact the different edge states, thereby allowing detection of topological defects in the bulk with a standard four terminal measurement. Our proposal could be implemented in graphene subject to an artificially patterned lattice.
Topological quantum information processing relies on adiabatic braiding of non-Abelian quasiparticles. Performing the braiding operations in finite time introduces transitions out of the ground-state manifold and deviations from the non-Abelian Berry phase. We show that these errors can be eliminated by suitably designed counterdiabatic correction terms in the Hamiltonian. We implement the resulting shortcuts to adiabaticity for simple protocols of non-Abelian braiding and show that the error suppression can be substantial even for approximate realizations of the counterdiabatic terms.
Abstract Indistinguishability of particles is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics 1 . For all elementary and quasiparticles observed to date—including fermions, bosons and Abelian anyons—this principle guarantees that the braiding of identical particles leaves the system unchanged 2,3 . However, in two spatial dimensions, an intriguing possibility exists: braiding of non-Abelian anyons causes rotations in a space of topologically degenerate wavefunctions 4–8 . Hence, it can change the observables of the system without violating the principle of indistinguishability. Despite the well-developed mathematical description of non-Abelian anyons and numerous theoretical proposals 9–22 , the experimental observation of their exchange statistics has remained elusive for decades. Controllable many-body quantum states generated on quantum processors offer another path for exploring these fundamental phenomena. Whereas efforts on conventional solid-state platforms typically involve Hamiltonian dynamics of quasiparticles, superconducting quantum processors allow for directly manipulating the many-body wavefunction by means of unitary gates. Building on predictions that stabilizer codes can host projective non-Abelian Ising anyons 9,10 , we implement a generalized stabilizer code and unitary protocol 23 to create and braid them. This allows us to experimentally verify the fusion rules of the anyons and braid them to realize their statistics. We then study the prospect of using the anyons for quantum computation and use braiding to create an entangled state of anyons encoding three logical qubits. Our work provides new insights about non-Abelian braiding and, through the future inclusion of error correction to achieve topological protection, could open a path towards fault-tolerant quantum computing.
There exists a close relationship between topological quantum error-correcting codes and topological order in condensed matter systems. Indeed, a topological stabilizer code can be regarded as the ground state of a suitable Hamiltonian model, so that "wrong" syndromes correspond to excitations. These excitations are anyons, quasiparticles that carry a topological charge and exhibit exotic statistics. Anyon models can be symmetric under some permutations of their topological charges. One can then conceive topological defects that, under monodromy, transform anyons according to a symmetry. We call these defects twists. Twists give rise to new topological degrees of freedom in the ground state, useful as a quantum memory. Moreover, twists can be braided to perform topologically protected gates on these topological qubits. Thus, twists provide a new way to encode and compute with topological codes through code deformations. Because the properties of twists depend on the anyon model, codes with different anyon content give rise to different computational capabilities. E.g., in the well-known toric code a process where suitable twists are braided and fused has the same outcome as if they were Ising anyons. These are non-abelian anyons: braiding produces non-trivial gates on encoded qubits.