Noise-resilient Majorana Edge Modes on a Chain of Superconducting Qubits

Alejandro Grajales Dau
Alex Crook
Alex Opremcak
Alexa Rubinov
Alexander Korotkov
Alexandre Bourassa
Alexei Kitaev
Alexis Morvan
Andre Gregory Petukhov
Andrew Dunsworth
Andrey Klots
Anthony Megrant
Ashley Anne Huff
Benjamin Chiaro
Bernardo Meurer Costa
Bob Benjamin Buckley
Brooks Foxen
Charles Neill
Christopher Schuster
Cody Jones
Daniel Eppens
Dar Gilboa
Dave Landhuis
Dmitry Abanin
Doug Strain
Ebrahim Forati
Edward Farhi
Emily Mount
Fedor Kostritsa
Frank Carlton Arute
Guifre Vidal
Igor Aleiner
Jamie Yao
Jeremy Patterson Hilton
Joao Basso
John Mark Kreikebaum
Joonho Lee
Juan Atalaya
Juhwan Yoo
Justin Thomas Iveland
Kannan Aryaperumal Sankaragomathi
Kenny Lee
Kim Ming Lau
Kostyantyn Kechedzhi
Kunal Arya
Lara Faoro
Leon Brill
Marco Szalay
Markus Rudolf Hoffmann
Masoud Mohseni
Michael Blythe Broughton
Michael Newman
Michel Henri Devoret
Mike Shearn
Nicholas Bushnell
Orion Martin
Paul Conner
Pavel Laptev
Ping Yeh
Rajeev Acharya
Rebecca Potter
Reza Fatemi
Roberto Collins
Sergei Isakov
Shirin Montazeri
Steve Habegger
Thomas E O'Brien
Trent Huang
Trond Ikdahl Andersen
Vadim Smelyanskiy
Vladimir Shvarts
Wayne Liu
William Courtney
William Giang
William J. Huggins
Wojtek Mruczkiewicz
Xiao Mi
Yaxing Zhang
Yu Chen
Yuan Su
Zijun Chen
Science (2022) (to appear)
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Abstract

Inherent symmetry of a quantum system may protect its otherwise fragile states. Leveraging such protection requires testing its robustness against uncontrolled environmental interactions. Using 47 superconducting qubits, we implement the kicked Ising model which exhibits Majorana edge modes (MEMs) protected by a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetry. Remarkably, we find that any multi-qubit Pauli operator overlapping with the MEMs exhibits a uniform decay rate comparable to single-qubit relaxation rates, irrespective of its size or composition. This finding allows us to accurately reconstruct the exponentially localized spatial profiles of the MEMs. Spectroscopic measurements further indicate exponentially suppressed hybridization between the MEMs over larger system sizes, which manifests as a strong resilience against low-frequency noise. Our work elucidates the noise sensitivity of symmetry-protected edge modes in a solid-state environment.

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