It is well known that Majorana zero modes can be harnessed for applications in topological quantum computation. Transitions away from the ground-state subspace, where computations are performed, are detrimental. The authors study the diabatic error which quantifies these transitions as Majorana zero modes are transported across a superconducting wire. Using the `piano key' approach for transport, the authors find that there exists an optimal number of keys which reduces the diabatic error.
It is well known that Majorana zero modes can be harnessed for applications in topological quantum computation. Transitions away from the ground-state subspace, where computations are performed, are detrimental. The authors study the diabatic error which quantifies these transitions as Majorana zero modes are transported across a superconducting wire. Using the `piano key' approach for transport, the authors find that there exists an optimal number of keys which reduces the diabatic error.
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.
Majorana Bound States (MBS) have emerged as promising candidates for robust quantum computing due to their non-Abelian statistics and topological protection. In this study, we focus on the dynamical transport of MBS in the semiconductor-superconductor (SM-SC) heterostructure via the piano key-type setup, wherein each of the keys of the wire can be tuned from topological to trivial phases. We focus on the transport of MBS under noisy conditions and evaluate the feasibility for realistic scenarios. The central emphasis of our work lies in using both numerical and analytical techniques to understand the effect of noise in inducing diabatic errors during transport and to establish scaling laws that relate these errors to the drive time. To achieve this, we derive an effective model that captures the scaling behavior in both noise-free and noisy scenarios, providing a unified framework for analyzing the transport dynamics. We investigate the optimal number of keys for both noisy and noiseless scenarios. Additionally, we explore the effects of disorder on transport dynamics, highlighting its impact on error scaling and robustness.
Finite-length one-dimensional topological superconductor wires host localized Majorana zero modes at their ends. In realistic models, these appear only after a topological quantum critical point is crossed by external tuning of parameters. Thus, there is a universal finite-size scaling, governed by the critical point, that dictates the evolution of the energy of the Majorana modes near the transition. We first describe this scaling, then apply it in detail to an explicit synthetic topological superconductor model. Our work not only connects Ising quantum criticality with realistic nanowires in the presence of spin-orbit coupling, Zeeman splitting, and superconductivity, but also provides a viable experimental route for discerning the existence of the topological quantum critical point.
From our general index theorem, which characterizes faithfully the topological intrinsic boundary-bulk correspondence of topological superconductors and insulators, we reveal rigorously that four topologically distinct types of Majorana zero modes can emerge at the ends of superconducting wires of various symmetry classes. More intriguingly, we establish three exotic one-dimensional models that have different types of topological charge of Majorana zero modes and disclose exactly the corresponding topological properties, whose distinct topological essences may be tested experimentally. Moreover, we also address their application in universal quantum manipulation, which is promising for realizing universal topological quantum computation.
Abstract Braiding Majorana zero-modes around each other is a promising route toward topological quantum computing. Yet, two competing maxims emerge when implementing Majorana braiding in real systems: on the one hand, perfect braiding should be conducted adiabatically slowly to avoid non-topological errors. On the other hand, braiding must be conducted fast such that decoherence effects introduced by the environment are negligible, which are generally unavoidable in finite-size systems. This competition results in an intermediate time scale for Majorana braiding that is optimal, but generally not error-free. Here, we calculate this intermediate time scale for a T-junction of short one-dimensional topological superconductors coupled to a bosonic bath that generates fluctuations in the local electric potential, which stem from, e.g. environmental photons or phonons of the substrate. We thereby obtain boundaries for the speed of Majorana braiding with a predetermined gate fidelity. Our results emphasize the general susceptibility of Majorana-based information storage in finite-size systems and can serve as a guide for determining the optimal braiding times in future experiments.
Majorana zero modes are a promising platform for topologically protected quantum information processing. Their non-Abelian nature, which is key for performing quantum gates, is most prominently exhibited through braiding. While originally formulated for two-dimensional systems, it has been shown that braiding can also be realized using one-dimensional wires by forming an essentially two-dimensional network. Here, we show that in driven systems far from equilibrium, one can do away with the second spatial dimension altogether by instead using quasienergy as the second dimension. To realize this, we use a Floquet topological superconductor which can exhibit Majorana modes at two special eigenvalues of the evolution operator, 0 and $\ensuremath{\pi}$, and thus can realize four Majorana modes in a single, driven quantum wire. We describe and numerically evaluate a protocol that realizes a topologically protected exchange of two Majorana zero modes in a single wire by adiabatically modulating the Floquet drive and using the $\ensuremath{\pi}$ modes as auxiliary degrees of freedom.