Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 15: Topology: Majorana Physics

TT 15.1: Talk

Monday, March 9, 2026, 15:00–15:15, HSZ/0105

Negative hybridization: a potential cure for braiding with imperfect Majorana modes — Cole Peeters, Themba Hodge, and •Stephan Rachel — School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Australia

Majorana zero modes, the elementary building blocks for the quantum bits of topological quantum computers, are known to suffer from hybridization when they get too close to each other. In that case, their wavefunctions start to overlap and the energy of the Majorana zero modes is pushed to finite energies. This breaking of the ground-state degeneracy leads to an accumulation of error during a braid–the fundamental process which encodes topological quantum gates. Here we show that, in certain situations, the energy splitting of the Majorana wavefunctions can become negative which can be utilized to reduce the average hybridization energy of the total braid. We discuss two instructive examples where negative hybridization improves the braiding performance to the point where imperfect Majorana modes have their non-Abelian statistics restored, resulting in successfully operated quantum gates. The upshot is that negative hybridization as an intrinsic property of Majorana modes has the potential to bring a Majorana-based quantum computer closer to reality.

Keywords: Majorana zero modes; Topological superconductivity; Braiding; Topological quantum computing