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arXiv:1608.00022

Non-local response in the disordered Majorana chain

Sonika Johri, Rahul Nandkishore

Published Jul 29, 2016• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The prospects for realizing a topological quantum computer have brightened since the apparent detection of Majorana fermions at the ends of semiconducting nanowires. These Majorana zero-modes persist in the presence of the strong disorder that may be present in such systems, protected by the mobility gap of localized systems. Recent proposals to manipulate quantum information in a Majorana chain involve adiabatically adjusting gate voltages in one-dimensional nanowire networks. However, as we show, in the adiabatic limit, a disordered system with multiple zero-mode Majorana fermions will undergo a non-local response to a local perturbation via a multi-level Landau-Zener transition. This will disperse the quantum information stored in the target zero-modes amongst other zero-modes that are present in the system, complicating the realization of controlled gates. There is however a solution that may work in practice: we show that there is an optimum window of intermediate time-scales during which the quantum information is approximately preserved under manipulation.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1608.00022

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The prospects for realizing a topological quantum computer have brightened since the apparent detection of Majorana fermions at the ends of semiconducting nanowires. These Majorana zero-modes persist in the presence of the strong disorder that may be present in such systems, protected by the mobility gap of localized systems. Recent proposals to manipulate quantum information in a Majorana chain involve adiabatically adjusting gate voltages in one-dimensional nanowire networks. However, as we show, in the adiabatic limit, a disordered system with multiple zero-mode Majorana fermions will undergo a non-local response to a local perturbation via a multi-level Landau-Zener transition. This will disperse the quantum information stored in the target zero-modes amongst other zero-modes that are present in the system, complicating the realization of controlled gates. There is however a solution that may work in practice: we show that there is an optimum window of intermediate time-scales during which the quantum information is approximately preserved under manipulation.
The realization and manipulation of topological Majorana zero modes (MZMs) have been pivotal in both theoretical and experimental research. In this paper, we present a symmetry enhanced topological model that supports stable, localized MZMs in a one-dimensional interacting fermionic system. The MZMs in our model, induced by particle-number conserving interactions, are fully decoupled from the chain's interior and remain degenerate regardless of chain length, allowing for simulations in extremely short fermionic chains. The topological phase transition is driven by changes in coupling parameters, transitioning to a trivial phase without affecting the MZMs' independence or degeneracy, only their topological protection. Additionally, local symmetries in the model enhance MZMs' stability and reveal unique odd-even effects across different chain lengths.
The realization and manipulation of Majorana zero modes have drawn significant attention for their crucial role in enabling topological quantum computation. Conventional approaches to the braiding of Majorana zero modes rely on adiabatic processes. In this work, using a composite 2-Kitaev-chain system accommodating Majorana zero modes as a working example, we propose a nonadiabatic and non-Abelian geometry phase-based protocol to execute operations on these Majorana zero modes. This is possible by locally coupling the edge sites of both quantum chains with an embedded lattice defect, successfully simulating the braiding operation of two Majorana modes in a highly nonadiabatic fashion. To further enhance the robustness against control imperfections, we apply a multiple-pulse composite strategy to our quantum chain setting for second-order protection of the braiding operations. Our proposal can also support the fast and robust realization of the $\ensuremath{\pi}/8$ gate, an essential ingredient for universal quantum computation. This work hence offers a potential pathway toward the nonadiabatic and fault-tolerant control of Majorana zero modes.
Majorana zero modes (MZMs) appear as edge states in topological superconductors and are envisioned as promising candidates for application towards fault-tolerant quantum computation. Quantum information may be stored in a degenerate ground state subspace constructed from MZMs while quantum gates may be performed by braiding MZMs and exploiting their non-Abelian properties. While the topological protection of MZMs ensures that they are robust against decoherence, their dynamical manipulation can nonetheless induce undesirable transitions to excited states, manifesting as a “diabatic error.”This thesis studies the diabatic error accumulated as MZMs are transported across a superconducting wire, which is an essential building block for physical braiding schemes. The transport protocol considered relies on appropriately tuning sections (“piano keys”) of a wire between distinct topological phases via electric gates to control local chemical potentials. First, the diabatic error is examined for transport which uses multiple piano keys. The error is calculated through numerical simulation of the transport protocol and is complemented by approximate analytical expressions calculated using an effective, low-energy model. It is found that an optimal number of keys can be used to reduce the error. Furthermore, this thesis explores transport protocols performed on wires which feature disorder on the chemical potential and noise in the piano key tuning. The rise in the diabatic error due to these additional effects with respect to parameters-of-interest including the disorder strength, disorder correlation length, noise amplitude, and noise frequency cut-offs is characterized using numerical methods. For disorder, it is found that the error’s behaviour is principally controlled by the statistics of the minimum bulk energy gap. Spatially correlated disorder is also studied which presents non-monotonic behaviour for the error. Finally, for noise, it is found that optical transitions can cause a substantial increase in the error as the frequency modes within the noise approach the minimum energy gap.
In topological quantum computing, unitary operations on qubits are performed by adiabatic braiding of non-Abelian quasiparticles, such as Majorana zero modes, and are protected from local environmental perturbations. In the adiabatic regime, with timescales set by the inverse gap of the system, the errors can be made arbitrarily small by performing the process more slowly. To enhance the performance of quantum information processing with Majorana zero modes, we apply the theory of optimal control to the diabatic dynamics of Majorana-based qubits. While we sacrifice complete topological protection, we impose constraints on the optimal protocol to take advantage of the nonlocal nature of topological information and increase the robustness of our gates. By using the Pontryagin's maximum principle, we show that robust equivalent gates to perfect adiabatic braiding can be implemented in finite times through optimal pulses. In our implementation, modifications to the device Hamiltonian are avoided. Focusing on thermally isolated systems, we study the effects of calibration errors and external white and 1/f1/f1/f (pink) noise on Majorana-based gates. While a noise-induced antiadiabatic behavior, where a slower process creates more diabatic excitations, prohibits indefinite enhancement of the robustness of the adiabatic scheme, our fast optimal protocols exhibit remarkable stability to noise and have the potential to significantly enhance the practical performance of Majorana-based information processing.
It was recently realized that quenched disorder may enhance the reliability of topological qubits by reducing the mobility of anyons at zero temperature. Here we compute storage times with and without disorder for quantum chains with unpaired Majorana fermions - the simplest toy model of a quantum memory. Disorder takes the form of a random site-dependent chemical potential. The corresponding one-particle problem is a one-dimensional Anderson model with disorder in the hopping amplitudes. We focus on the zero-temperature storage of a qubit encoded in the ground state of the Majorana chain. Storage and retrieval are modeled by a unitary evolution under the memory Hamiltonian with an unknown weak perturbation followed by an error-correction step. Assuming dynamical localization of the one-particle problem, we show that the storage time grows exponentially with the system size. We give supporting evidence for the required localization property by estimating Lyapunov exponents of the one-particle eigenfunctions. We also simulate the storage process for chains with a few hundred sites. Our numerical results indicate that in the absence of disorder, the storage time grows only as a logarithm of the system size. We provide numerical evidence for the beneficial effect of disorder on storage times and show that suitably chosen pseudorandom potentials can outperform random ones.
Detection and manipulation of excitations with non-Abelian statistics, such as Majorana fermions, are essential for creating topological quantum computers. To this end, we show the connection between the existence of such localized particles and the phenomenon of unitary subharmonic response (SR) in periodically driven systems. In particular, starting from highly nonequilibrium initial states, the unpaired Majorana modes exhibit spin oscillations with twice the driving period, are localized, and can have exponentially long lifetimes in clean systems. While the lifetime of SR is limited in translationally invariant systems, we show that disorder can be engineered to stabilize the subharmonic response of Majorana modes. A viable observation of this phenomenon can be achieved using modern multiqubit hardware, such as superconducting circuits and cold atomic systems.