Scalable quantum control and non-abelian anyon creation in the Kitaev honeycomb model

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how optimal control theory can be applied to the Kitaev honeycomb model to enable fast, scalable quantum control and non-abelian anyon creation, overcoming the limitations of adiabatic processes.

Contribution

The authors extend fermionization to time-dependent cases and develop a scalable quantum control method for large lattice models in the Kitaev honeycomb system.

Findings

Optimal control enables non-adiabatic manipulation of the model.

Control method scales sub-exponentially with system size.

Facilitates experimental realization of topological quantum computation.

Abstract

The Kitaev honeycomb model is a system allowing for experimentally realisable quantum computation with topological protection of quantum information. Practical implementation of quantum information processing typically relies on adiabatic, i.e. slow dynamics. Here we show that the restriction to adiabatic dynamics can be overcome with optimal control theory, enabled by an extension of the fermionization of the Kitaev honeycomb model to the time-dependent case. Moreover we present a quantum control method that is applicable to large lattice models due to sub-exponential scaling.