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Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society

Topological quantum computation

Michael Hartley Freedman, Alexei Kitaev, Michael Larsen, Zhenghan Wang

Published Oct 10, 2002• 669 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The theory of quantum computation can be constructed from the abstract study of anyonic systems. In mathematical terms, these are unitary topological modular functors. They underlie the Jones polynomial and arise in Witten-Chern-Simons theory. The braiding and fusion of anyonic excitations in quantum Hall electron liquids and 2D-magnets are modeled by modular functors, opening a new possibility for the realization of quantum computers. The chief advantage of anyonic computation would be physical error correction: An error rate scaling like e − α ℓ e^{-\alpha \ell } , where ℓ \ell is a length scale, and α \alpha is some positive constant. In contrast, the “presumptive" qubit-model of quantum computation, which repairs errors combinatorically, requires a fantastically low initial error rate (about 10 − 4 10^{-4} ) before computation can be stabilized.

DOI
10.1090/s0273-0979-02-00964-3

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The theory of quantum computation can be constructed from the abstract study of anyonic systems. In mathematical terms, these are unitary topological modular functors. They underlie the Jones polynomial and arise in Witten-Chern-Simons theory. The braiding and fusion of anyonic excitations in quantum Hall electron liquids and 2D-magnets are modeled by modular functors, opening a new possibility for the realization of quantum computers. The chief advantage of anyonic computation would be physical error correction: An error rate scaling like $e^{-\ał}$, where $ł$ is a length scale, and $α$ is some positive constant. In contrast, the $\q$presumptive" qubit-model of quantum computation, which repairs errors combinatorically, requires a fantastically low initial error rate (about $10^{-4}$) before computation can be stabilized.

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The theory of quantum computation can be constructed from the abstract study of anyonic systems. In mathematical terms, these are unitary topological modular functors. They underlie the Jones polynomial and arise in Witten-Chern-Simons theory. The braiding and fusion of anyonic excitations in quantum Hall electron liquids and 2D-magnets are modeled by modular functors, opening a new possibility for the realization of quantum computers. The chief advantage of anyonic computation would be physical error correction: An error rate scaling like e − α ℓ e^{-\alpha \ell } , where ℓ \ell is a length scale, and α \alpha is some positive constant. In contrast, the “presumptive" qubit-model of quantum computation, which repairs errors combinatorically, requires a fantastically low initial error rate (about 10 − 4 10^{-4} ) before computation can be stabilized.
The theory of quantum computation can be constructed from the abstract study of anyonic systems. In mathematical terms, these are unitary topological modular functors. They underlie the Jones polynomial and arise in Witten-Chern-Simons theory. The braiding and fusion of anyonic excitations in quantum Hall electron liquids and 2D-magnets are modeled by modular functors, opening a new possibility for the realization of quantum computers. The chief advantage of anyonic computation would be physical error correction: An error rate scaling like $e^{-\ał}$, where łłł is a length scale, and ααα is some positive constant. In contrast, the $\q$presumptive" qubit-model of quantum computation, which repairs errors combinatorically, requires a fantastically low initial error rate (about 10−410^{-4}10−4) before computation can be stabilized.
Topological quantum computation may provide a robust approach for encoding and manipulating information utilizing the topological properties of anyonic quasiparticle excitations. We develop an efficient means to map between dense and sparse representations of quantum information (qubits) and a simple construction of multiqubit gates, for all anyon models from Chern-Simons-Witten SU(2)k{}_{k}k​ theory that support universal quantum computation by braiding ($k\ensuremath{\geqslant}3,\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}k\ensuremath{\ne}4$). In the process, we show how the constructions of topological quantum memory and gates for k=2,4k=2,4k=2,4 connect naturally to those for $k\ensuremath{\geqslant}3,\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}k\ensuremath{\ne}4$, unifying these concepts in a simple framework. Furthermore, we illustrate potential extensions of these ideas to other anyon models outside of Chern-Simons-Witten field theory.
Abstract Topological quantum computers promise a fault tolerant means to perform quantum computation. Topological quantum computers use particles with exotic exchange statistics called non-Abelian anyons, and the simplest anyon model which allows for universal quantum computation by particle exchange or braiding alone is the Fibonacci anyon model. One classically hard problem that can be solved efficiently using quantum computation is finding the value of the Jones polynomial of knots at roots of unity. We aim to provide a pedagogical, self-contained, review of topological quantum computation with Fibonacci anyons, from the braiding statistics and matrices to the layout of such a computer and the compiling of braids to perform specific operations. Then we use a simulation of a topological quantum computer to explicitly demonstrate a quantum computation using Fibonacci anyons, evaluating the Jones polynomial of a selection of simple knots. In addition to simulating a modular circuit-style quantum algorithm, we also show how the magnitude of the Jones polynomial at specific points could be obtained exactly using Fibonacci or Ising anyons. Such an exact algorithm seems ideally suited for a proof of concept demonstration of a topological quantum computer.
Topological quantum computation relies on the concepts of non-Abelian anyons and topological superconductors, holding great promise for noise-protected computation scalable since it stores quantum information coherently, irrespective of position. Included in this review are fundamentals like Majorana fermion zero modes, current innovations at Microsoft regarding nanowires, along with challenges and plans for scaling quantum computation at the level of million-qubits by the year 2030. It employs the use of anyons, a kind of quasi particle that exists in a two-dimensional setting. The world lines of the anyons cross each other in a braid fashion in the three-dimensional spacetime (one time-dimensional and two space-dimensional). The braids correspond to the logic gates in a computer. The one big advantage that the use of the quantum braid has over the trapped quantum particles has to do with stability. A small disturbance in a system may cause the decoherence of the quantum states and errors in calculation in a regular quantum computer, but in the braids, the disturbance does not affect the topological properties because it is like the difference between cutting and reconnecting a string to create a new braid compared to a ball (standing in place for a regular trapped quantum particle in four-dimensional spacetime) hitting a wall. Topological quantum computers are equivalent in computational power to other standard models of quantum computation, in particular to the quantum circuit model and to the quantum Turing machine model. That is, any of these models can efficiently simulate any of the others. Nonetheless, certain algorithms may be a more natural fit to the topological quantum computer model. For example, algorithms for evaluating the Jones polynomial were first developed in the topological model, and only later converted and extended in the standard quantum circuit model.
A quantum computer can perform exponentially faster than its classical counterpart. It works on the principle of superposition. But due to the decoherence effect, the superposition of a quantum state gets destroyed by the interaction with the environment. It is a real challenge to completely isolate a quantum system to make it free of decoherence. This problem can be circumvented by the use of topological quantum phases of matter. These phases have quasiparticles excitations called anyons. The anyons are charge-flux composites and show exotic fractional statistics. When the order of exchange matters, then the anyons are called non-Abelian anyons. Majorana fermions in topological superconductors and quasiparticles in some quantum Hall states are non-Abelian anyons. Such topological phases of matter have a ground state degeneracy. The fusion of two or more non-Abelian anyons can result in a superposition of several anyons. The topological quantum gates are implemented by braiding and fusion of the non-Abelian anyons. The fault-tolerance is achieved through the topological degrees of freedom of anyons. Such degrees of freedom are non-local, hence inaccessible to the local perturbations. In this dissertation, we provide a comprehensive review of the fundamentals of logic design in topological quantum computing. The braid group and knot invariants in the skein theory are discussed. The physical insight behind the braiding is explained by the geometric phases and the gauge transformation. The mathematical models for the fusion and braiding are presented in terms of the category theory and the quantum deformation of the recoupling theory. The topological phases of matter are described by the topology of band structure. The wave function of quasiparticles in the quantum Hall effect and the theory of Majorana fermions in topological superconductors are also discussed. The dynamics of the charge-flux composites and their Hilbert space are expressed through the Chern-Simons theory and the two-dimensional topological quantum field theory. The Ising and Fibonacci anyonic models for binary gates are briefly given. Ternary logic gates are more compact than their binary counterparts and naturally arise in a type of anyonic model called the metaplectic anyons. We reduced the quantum cost of the existing ternary quantum arithmetic gates and proposed that these gates can be implemented with the metaplectic anyons.
Abstract Quantum gates built out of braid group elements form the building blocks of topological quantum computation. They have been extensively studied in SU(2)k quantum group theories, a rich source of examples of non-Abelian anyons such as the Ising (k = 2), Fibonacci (k = 3) and Jones-Kauffman (k = 4) anyons. We show that the fusion spaces of these anyonic systems can be precisely mapped to the product state zero modes of certain Nicolai-like supersymmetric spin chains. As a result, we can realize the braid group in terms of the product state zero modes of these supersymmetric systems. These operators kill all the other states in the Hilbert space, thus preventing the occurrence of errors while processing information, making them suitable for quantum computing.