Ohio State is in the process of revising websites and program materials to accurately reflect compliance with the law. While this work occurs, language referencing protected class status or other activities prohibited by Ohio Senate Bill 1 may still appear in some places. However, all programs and activities are being administered in compliance with federal and state law.

Condensed Matter Theory Seminar - Jason Alicea (California Institute of Technology - CalTech), "A new path towards universal decoherence-free quantum computation"

Jason Alicea, CalTech
March 30, 2015
11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Smith Seminar Room (1080 PRB)

The realization of a quantum computer poses a grand outstanding challenge that promises technological advances in areas ranging from cryptography to quantum simulation and beyond.  Typically decoherence--whereby environmental perturbations corrupt quantum information--presents the chief obstacle.  Topological quantum computation, however, cleverly sidesteps decoherence at the hardware level by non-locally manipulating quantum information using emergent particles known as non-Abelian anyons.  Considerable progress has recently been made towards stabilizing the simplest non-Abelian anyons (particles binding Majorana zero-modes) by judiciously combining well-understood materials.  This ‘engineering’ approach has inspired a wave of experiments, though such Majorana-based platforms require unprotected gates to run general quantum computing algorithms, thus entailing significant overhead.  A natural question therefore arises: can one combine ordinary ingredients to synthesize a fully fault-tolerant, universal quantum computer?  I will answer this question in the affirmative.  More precisely, I will describe how one can combine simple fractional quantum Hall states and conventional superconductors to realize a novel superconducting phase that harbors so-called Fibonacci anyons.  These particles constitute the ‘holy grail’ for topological quantum computing in that they allow for computational universality via a single elementary gate generated by braiding the anyons around each other.