Realization of Topological Quantum Computation with surface codes

Abstract

In this paper, the degenerate ground states of Z2 topological order on a plane with holes (the so-called surface codes) are used as the protected code subspace to build a topological quantum computer by tuning their quantum tunneling effect. Using a designer Hamiltonian - the Kitaev toric-code model as an example, we study quantum tunneling effects of the surface codes and obtain its effective theory. Finally, we show how to do topological quantum computation including the initialization, the unitary transformation and the measurement.