Towards nanowire Majorana quantum bits in supercurrent devices
Abstract
Publicly Releasable AbstractResearch on semiconductor nanowires coupled to superconductors has come into focus most recently because of Majorana fermions that nanowires can host. Some of the most dramatic manifestations of Majorana fermions are predicted to come from supercurrent measurements. With this goal as a motivation, the project shall explore a rich variety of Josephson effects that serve as evidence of or exist together with Majorana zero modes in hybrid superconductor-semiconductorJosephson junctions. This will be a pioneering study of the Josephson effect in quasi one-dimensional systems with strong Zeeman and spin-orbit interactions. Specifically, this project will study unconventional supercurrent-phase relationships through the measurements of the dc and ac Josephson effects. Majorana modes will be established through the investigation of the fractionalJosephson effect which corresponds to the current phase relation with doubled periodicity. Future fault-tolerant topological quantum computing architecture has as its centerpiece the idea of braiding, i.e. the physical exchange of positions of non-Abelian anyon quasiparticles. The most basic non-Abelian anyon is a Majorana zero mode. This project shall demonstrate a Majoranafluxonium2-qubit system which is a device that can be used to read and write quantum information into the Majorana qubit via an ancilla fluxonium qubit. This is an important step towards braiding and is a demonstration of Majorana-based quantum information storage memory. As intermediate steps, semiconductor nanowire-based transmon and fluxonium quantum bits will be investigated.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jun 09, 2021
- Source ID
- N000142112473
Entities
People
- Sergey M Frolov
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Pittsburgh