Paper detail

Knot Logic and Topological Quantum Computing with Majorana Fermions

This paper is an introduction to relationships between quantum topology and quantum computing. We take a foundational approach, showing how knots are related not just to braiding and quantum operators, but to quantum set theoretical foundations and algebras of fermions. We show how the operation of negation in logic, seen as both a value and an operator, can generate the fusion algebra for a Majorana fermion, a particle that is its own anti-particle and interacts with itself either to annihilate itself or to produce itself. We call negation in this mode the mark, as it operates on itself to change from marked to unmarked states. The mark viewed recursively as a simplest discrete dynamical system naturally generates the fermion algebra, the quaternions and the braid group representations related to Majorana fermions. The paper begins with these fundmentals. They provide a conceptual key to many of the models that appear later in the paper. In particular, the Fibonacci model for topological quantum computing is seen to be based on the fusion rules for a Majorana fermion and these in turn are the interaction rules for the mark seen as a logical particle. It requires a shift in viewpoint to see that the operator of negation can also be seen as a logical value. The quaternions emerge naturally from the reentering mark. All these models have their roots in unitary representations of the Artin braid group to the quaternions.