Instantaneous braids and Dehn twists in topologically ordered states

Abstract

A defining feature of topologically ordered states of matter is the existence of locally indistinguishable states on spaces with non-trivial topology. These degenerate states form a representation of the mapping class group (MCG) of the space, which is generated by braids of defects or anyons, and by Dehn twists along non-contractible cycles. These operations can be viewed as fault-tolerant logical gates in the context of topological quantum error correcting codes and topological quantum computation. Here we show that braids and Dehn twists can in general be implemented by a constant depth quantum circuit, with a depth that is independent of code distance $d$ and system size. The circuit consists of a constant depth local quantum circuit (LQC) implementing a local geometry deformation of the quantum state, followed by a permutation on (relabelling of) the qubits. The permutation requires permuting qubits that are separated by a distance of order $d$; it can be implemented by collective classical motion of mobile qubits or as a constant depth circuit using long-range SWAP operations (with a range set by $d$) on immobile qubits. Applying these results to certain non-Abelian quantum error correcting codes demonstrates how universal logical gate sets can be implemented on encoded qubits using only constant depth unitary circuits.