Methods for simulating string-net states and anyons on a digital quantum computer

Non-Abelian topological orders offer an intriguing path towards fault-tolerant quantum computation, where information can be encoded and manipulated in a topologically protected manner immune to arbitrary local noises and perturbations. However, realizing non-Abelian topologically ordered states is notoriously challenging in both condensed matter and programmable quantum systems, and it was not until recently that signatures of non-Abelian statistics were observed through dig...

Fibonacci string-net condensate, a complex topological state that supports non-Abelian anyon excitations, holds promise for fault-tolerant universal quantum computation. However, its realization by a static-lattice Hamiltonian has remained elusive due to the inherent high-order interactions demanded. Here, we introduce a scalable dynamical string-net preparation (DSNP) approach, suitable even for near-term quantum processors, that can dynamically prepare the state through rec...

The Fibonacci topological order is the prime candidate for the realization of universal topological quantum computation. We devise minimal quantum circuits to demonstrate the non-Abelian nature of the doubled Fibonacci topological order, as realized in the Levin-Wen string net model. Our circuits effectively initialize the ground state, create excitations, twist and braid them, all in the smallest lattices possible. We further design methods to determine the fusion amplitudes...

Topological quantum computers promise a fault tolerant means to perform quantum computation. Topological quantum computers use particles with exotic exchange statistics called non-Abelian anyons, and the simplest anyon model which allows for universal quantum computation by particle exchange or braiding alone is the Fibonacci anyon model. One classically hard problem that can be solved efficiently using quantum computation is finding the value of the Jones polynomial of knots...

In this article we present a pedagogical introduction of the main ideas and recent advances in the area of topological quantum computation. We give an overview of the concept of anyons and their exotic statistics, present various models that exhibit topological behavior, and we establish their relation to quantum computation. Possible directions for the physical realization of topological systems and the detection of anyonic behavior are elaborated.

This review presents an entry-level introduction to topological quantum computation -- quantum computing with anyons. We introduce anyons at the system-independent level of anyon models and discuss the key concepts of protected fusion spaces and statistical quantum evolutions for encoding and processing quantum information. Both the encoding and the processing are inherently resilient against errors due to their topological nature, thus promising to overcome one of the main o...

String-net condensation can give rise to non-Abelian anyons whereas loop condensation usually gives rise to Abelian anyons. It has been proposed that generalized quantum loop gases with non-orthogonal inner products can produce non-Abelian anyons. We detail an exact mapping between the string-net and the generalized loop models and explain how the non-orthogonal products arise. We also introduce a loop model of double-stranded nets where quantum loops with an orthogonal inner...

Topological orders are a class of exotic states of matter characterized by patterns of long-range entanglement. Certain topologically ordered systems are proposed as potential realization of fault-tolerant quantum computation. Topological orders can arise in two-dimensional spin-lattice models. In this paper, we engineer a time-dependent Hamiltonian to prepare a topologically ordered state through adiabatic evolution. The other sectors in the degenerate ground-state space of ...

We describe how to construct generalized string-net models, a class of exactly solvable lattice models that realize a large family of 2D topologically ordered phases of matter. The ground states of these models can be thought of as superpositions of different "string-net configurations", where each string-net configuration is a trivalent graph with labeled edges, drawn in the $xy$ plane. What makes this construction more general than the original string-net construction is th...

Quantum tensor network states and more particularly projected entangled-pair states provide a natural framework for representing ground states of gapped, topologically ordered systems. The defining feature of these representations is that topological order is a consequence of the symmetry of the underlying tensors in terms of matrix product operators. In this paper, we present a systematic study of those matrix product operators, and show how this relates entanglement propert...