Experimental Simulation of Topological Quantum Computing with Classical Circuits

The key obstacle to the realization of a scalable quantum computer is overcoming environmental and control errors. Topological quantum computation attracts great attention because it emerges as one of the most promising approaches to solving these problems. Various theoretical schemes for building topological quantum computation have been proposed. However, experimental implementation has always been a great challenge because it has proved to be extremely difficult to create and manipulate topological qubits in real systems. Therefore, topological quantum computation has not been realized in experiments yet. Herein, the first experimental simulation of topological quantum computation with classical circuits is reported. Based on the proposed new scheme with circuits, not only Majorana-like edge states are simulated experimentally, but also T junctions are constructed for simulating the braiding process. Furthermore, the feasibility of simulated topological quantum computing through a set of one- and two-qubit unitary operations is demonstrated. Finally, the simulation of Grover's search algorithm demonstrates that simulated topological quantum computation is ideally suited for such tasks. The developed circuit-based topological quantum-computing simulator can provide important references for developing future topological quantum circuits.