Exactly solving the Kitaev chain and generating Majorana-zero-modes out of noisy qubits

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 12; no. 1; p. 19882
• Main Author: Rančić, Marko J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 18-11-2022; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/766/119/2792; 639/766/483/2802; 639/766/483/481; Computers; Experiments; Hilbert space; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Physics; Quantum computing; Reproducibility; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-24341-z

Majorana-zero-modes (MZMs) were predicted to exist as edge states of a physical system called the Kitaev chain. MZMs should host particles that are their own antiparticles and could be used as a basis for a qubit which is robust-to-noise. However, all attempts to prove their existence gave inconclusive results. Here, the Kitaev chain is exactly solved with a quantum computing methodology and properties of MZMs are probed by generating eigenstates of the Kitev Hamiltonian on 3 noisy qubits of a publicly available quantum computer. After an ontological elaboration I show that two eigenstates of the Kitaev Hamiltonian exhibit eight signatures attributed to MZMs. The results presented here are a most comprehensive set of validations of MZMs ever conducted in an actual physical system. Furthermore, the findings of this manuscript are easily reproducible for any user of publicly available quantum computers, solving another important problem of research with MZMs—the result reproducibility crisis.