“Braiding” refers to the interlacing of world lines of non-Abelian anyons, with reference to the braiding of shoelaces or strands of hair. In the physical system of a topological superconductor, non-Abelian anyons are realized as Majorana zero modes bound to defects, such as a vortex or the ends of a nanowire. Braiding Majorana zero modes results in a unitary transformation of Majorana operators that forms a quantum logic gate. Because the braiding operation is protected from local sources of decoherence, using Majorana zero modes as qubits supports fault-tolerant quantum computation. Additionally, basic braiding operations can be combined to form a surface code for universal quantum computation. In this talk, I will illustrate the braiding trajectories that produce single-qubit and multi-qubit Clifford gates. Then, I will demonstrate how these braids can be applied to the real systems of Josephson-coupled islands and networks of nanowires.
Note: this event will be hybrid. The live talk occurring in Loomis 276 will be simultaneously broadcast via Zoom. The Zoom link will be sent to the Graduate Student and PDRA mailing lists. If you are not on one of those lists and are interested in attending, please email Caitlin at ckengle2@illinois.edu for the link.
