Designer non-Abelian anyon platforms: from Majorana to Fibonacci

Abstract

The emergence of non-Abelian anyons from large collections of interacting elementary particles is a conceptually beautiful phenomenon with important ramifications for fault-tolerant quantum computing. Over the last few decades the field has evolved from a highly theoretical subject to an active experimental area, particularly following proposals for trapping non-Abelian anyons in `engineered' structures built from well-understood components. In this short overview we briefly tour the impressive progress that has taken place in the quest for the simplest type of non-Abelian anyon---defects binding Majorana zero modes---and then turn to similar strategies for pursuing more exotic excitations. Specifically, we describe how interfacing simple quantum Hall systems with conventional superconductors yields `parafermionic' generalizations of Majorana modes and even Fibonacci anyons---the latter enabling fully fault tolerant universal quantum computation. We structure our treatment in a manner that unifies these topics in a coherent way. The ideas synthesized here spotlight largely uncharted experimental territory in the field of quantum Hall physics that appears ripe for discovery.

10 pages, 4 figures; lighthearted overview for proceedings of Nobel symposium on "New forms of matter: topological insulators and superconductors"