Adaptive constant-depth circuits for manipulating non-abelian anyons

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that for solvable non-abelian groups, key quantum operations on anyons can be performed with constant-depth adaptive circuits, enabling efficient experimental exploration of exotic topological phases.

Contribution

It introduces a method for implementing ground state preparation, anyon pair creation, and topological charge measurement using constant-depth adaptive circuits for non-abelian anyons.

Findings

All tasks achievable with constant-depth adaptive circuits for solvable groups.

Non-adaptive circuits cannot realize anyon creation for non-abelian groups.

Adaptive circuits are essential for manipulating non-abelian anyons.

Abstract

We consider Kitaev's quantum double model based on a finite group $G$ and describe quantum circuits for (a) preparation of the ground state, (b) creation of anyon pairs separated by an arbitrary distance, and (c) non-destructive topological charge measurement. We show that for any solvable group $G$ all above tasks can be realized by constant-depth adaptive circuits with geometrically local unitary gates and mid-circuit measurements. Each gate may be chosen adaptively depending on previous measurement outcomes. Constant-depth circuits are well suited for implementation on a noisy hardware since it may be possible to execute the entire circuit within the qubit coherence time. Thus our results could facilitate an experimental study of exotic phases of matter with a non-abelian particle statistics. We also show that adaptiveness is essential for our circuit construction. Namely, task (b) cannot be realized by non-adaptive constant-depth local circuits for any non-abelian group $G$. This is in a sharp contrast with abelian anyons which can be created and moved over an arbitrary distance by a depth-$1$ circuit composed of generalized Pauli gates.