Summary
Topological qubits offer a novel pathway to scalable quantum computing by simultaneously allowing for ease of coupling between qubits and strong decoupling of qubits from noise and dissipation. The most promising direction explores the topologically induced protection of theoretically predicted exotic quasiparticles, the so-called Majorana Zero Modes or MZMs. To-date MZMs, which follow non-Abelian statistics, have largely evaded unambiguous experimental demonstration. This project aims to provide a suitable material platform to realize MZMs. To achieve this, we develop a high-mobility semiconductor layer structure in order to observe the experimental signature of Majorana fermions on a platform that can be readily scaled and advanced to logical qubit devices. This project utilizes the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) facility, the Quantum NanoFab and Characterization facility, and cryogenic measurement facilities available at UW to produce high-mobility material and turn epitaxial heterostructures into working devices. Furthermore, we collaborate with Jonathan Baugh’s group on quantum transport, fabrication and cryogenic measurements. This project advances all stages of developing a device based on topological qubits: design, MBE growth, fabrication and final testing. We would like to demonstrate and use the non-Abelian statistics of Majorana fermions to form topological qubits in epitaxial heterostructures and produce devices that could in the future lead to topologically protected quantum computers.

Figure 1. Concept visualization of two bound Majorana Zero Modes (MZM, in red), under a superconductor island (grey), all within a gate-defined quantum wire. The semi-transparent blue layer represents the host two-dimensional electron gas in the semiconductor single crystal.
Related Content

Entangled Photon Orbital Angular Momentum Arrays
Summary Arrays of orbital angular momentum (OAM) states of light are a new form of structured light so far relatively unexplored in quantum information science. Unlike spin angular momentum of light, which is related to light’s polarization and covers two dimensions, OAM states, sometimes described as ‘donut beams’ due to the shape of the field […]
September 19, 2019

Quantum Computational Resources in the Presence of Symmetry
Summary Fault-tolerance is essential to the performance of quantum technologies, but known schemes are extremely resource intensive. Thus, improving existing schemes or inventing new schemes is of central importance. This joint project is based on the realization that fault-tolerance schemes make use of symmetries in fundamental ways, and that studying the problem of fault tolerance […]
March 13, 2019

Novel High-Speed Receiver for Quantum Communication and Sensing
Summary An essential aspect of a quantum channel is the detection and analysis of quantum signals in the form of photons. For most free-space applications, the photons are polarization encoded, e.g. by assigning the ‘0’ to horizontally polarized photons and ‘1’ to vertically polarized photons. However, where the geometric reference is not constant at all […]
January 1, 2019

Magnetoelectric Coupling in New Composite Multiferroic Nanostructures as High-Density Quantum Multistate Memory Elements
Summary Magnetoelectric multiferroics are materials that exhibit correlated ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties (i.e., a magnetoelectric effect). The resulting ability of these materials to simultaneously store data in electric polarization and magnetic moment could increase data storage density and data processing speed while reducing energy consumption. This project aims to design and fabricate new composite multiferroic […]
February 1, 2023