Alicea work included in Viewpoint: A Roadmap for a Scalable Topological Quantum Computer

Recent work by Jason Alicea, IQIM Postdoctoral Scholar alum Torsten Karzig and collaborators is featured as a Physics Viewpoint: A Roadmap for a Scalable Topological Quantum Computer. “ … the race to build a quantum computer has many competitors pursuing a variety of approaches, some of which appear to be on the verge of creating a small machine [1]. However, such small machines are unlikely to uncover truly macroscopic quantum phenomena, which have no classical analogs. This will likely require a scalable approach to quantum computation. A new study by

Schematic of one of the scalable architectures for TQC

Schematic of one of the scalable architectures for topological quantum computation proposed by Karzig and colleagues [2]. Sets of topological superconductors containing six elements (hexons), all hosting Majorana zero modes (MZMs) on the same side of the set, are interfaced with conventional superconductors and semiconductors to perform quantum computation

Torsten Karzig from Microsoft Station Q, California, and colleagues [2] brings together the expertise of a large and diverse group of physicists, ranging from experimentalists to topologists, to lay out a roadmap for a scalable architecture based on one of the most popular approaches [Topological Quantum Computing – TQC].

Viewpoint: A Roadmap for a Scalable Topological Quantum Computer Jay Sau, Condensed Matter Theory Center, Joint Quantum Institute, and Department of Physics, University of Maryland, June 21, 2017, Physics 10, 68

Read the full paper: Torsten Karzig, Christina Knapp, Roman M. Lutchyn, Parsa Bonderson, Matthew B. Hastings, Chetan Nayak, Jason Alicea, Karsten Flensberg, Stephan Plugge, Yuval Oreg, Charles M. Marcus, Michael H. Freedman (2017) Scalable designs for quasiparticle-poisoning-protected topological quantum computation with Majorana zero modes. Physical Review B, 95 (23). Art. No. 235305

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[1] The Economist, “Quantum Leaps,” 11 March 2017

[2] T. Karzig et al., “Scalable Designs for Quasiparticle-Poisoning-Protected Topological Quantum Computation with Majorana Zero Modes,” Phys. Rev. B 95, 235305 (2017).