Braids and phase gates through high-frequency virtual tunneling of Majorana zero modes

Abstract

Braiding of non-Abelian Majorana anyons is a first step towards using them in quantum computing. We propose a protocol for braiding Majorana zero modes formed at the edges of nanowires with strong spin orbit coupling and proximity induced superconductivity. Our protocol uses high frequency virtual tunneling between the ends of the nanowires in a tri-junction, which leads to an effective low frequency coarse grained dynamics for the system, to perform the braid. The braiding operation is immune to amplitude noise in the drives, and depends only on relative phase between the drives, which can be controlled by usual phase locking techniques. We also show how a phase gate, which is necessary for universal quantum computation, can be implemented with our protocol.