Dynamical signatures of ground-state degeneracy to discriminate against Andreev levels in a Majorana fusion experiment

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to distinguish Majorana zero-modes from Andreev levels by detecting dynamical signatures of ground-state degeneracy through adiabatic parameter space traversal, aiding topological quantum computation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to identify ground-state degeneracies, effectively discriminating Majorana modes from non-topological Andreev levels in fusion experiments.

Findings

Dynamical signatures can reveal ground-state degeneracy.

The method discriminates against accidental Andreev level degeneracies.

Adiabatic traversal pathways identify non-Abelian anyons.

Abstract

Detection of the fusion rule of Majorana zero-modes is a near-term milestone on the road to topological quantum computation. An obstacle is that the non-deterministic fusion outcome of topological zero-modes can be mimicked by the merging of non-topological Andreev levels. To distinguish these two scenarios, we search for dynamical signatures of the ground-state degeneracy that is the defining property of non-Abelian anyons. By adiabatically traversing parameter space along two different pathways one can identify ground-state degeneracies from the breakdown of adiabaticity. We show that the approach can discriminate against accidental degeneracies of Andreev levels.