Irrational Non-Abelian Statistics for Non-Hermitian Generalization of Majorana Zero Modes

Abstract

In condensed matter physics, non-Abelian statistics for Majorana zero modes (or Majorana Fermions) is very important, really exotic, and completely robust. The race for searching Majorana zero modes and verifying the corresponding non-Abelian statistics becomes an important frontier in condensed matter physics. In this letter, we generalize the Majorana zero modes to non-Hermitian (NH) topological systems that show universal but quite different properties from their Hermitian counterparts. Based on the NH Majorana zero modes, the orthogonal and nonlocal Majorana qubits are well defined. In particular, due to the particle-hole-symmetry breaking, NH Majorana zero modes have irrational non-Abelian statistics with continuously tunable braiding Berry phase from pi/8 to 3pi/8. This is quite different from the usual non-Abelian statistics with fixed braiding Berry phase pi/4 and becomes an example of "irrational topological phenomenon". The one-dimensional NH Kitaev model is taken as an example to numerically verify the irrational non-Abelian statistics for two NH Majorana zero modes. The numerical results are exactly consistent with the theoretical prediction. With the help of braiding these two zero modes, the pi/8 gate can be reached and thus universal topological quantum computation becomes possible.