Anyons24

Quantum computers offer an unprecedented computational advantage over classical ones, which could revolutionise medicine, energy and security. However, to achieve sufficient robustness required for such applications, we need to accurately control a large number of tiny particles at the quantum level. Current generation of quantum computers cannot meet their full potential due to control errors and decoherence, hindering their applications in science and technology. A milestone in the theory of quantum computing was achieved with the discovery of quantum error correcting codes. These algorithms allow to correct errors without measuring or destroying the logical quantum information. Nevertheless, practical implementations of quantum error correction require a huge overhead of resources, making them prohibitively costly in real-world applications.
This proposal takes an alternative approach of protecting quantum information from errors and decoherence by harnessing the cutting-edge phenomena in condensed matter physics, in particular the exotic properties of particles known as non-Abelian anyons. Anyons have rich topological properties that can simultaneously protect quantum information and process it in an error-free way, thus promising to realise the ultimate goal of fault-tolerant quantum computation.
This proposal will take advantage of the Project Lead's recent success in the quantum simulation of non-Abelian anyons with photonic systems and turn it into prototype fault-tolerant quantum computation devices. The project is very timely as these experimental advances were realised only in 2023, yet questions of how to use them for quantum computation remain open. This proposal will take these initial breakthroughs and create concrete blueprints for topological quantum computation based on the currently available technology. We will achieve that by strengthening our established collaboration with the experimental group of Prof Mehul Malik and by initiating a...