Topological Qubit Design and Leakage

We examine how best to design qubits for use in topological quantum computation. These qubits are topological Hilbert spaces associated with small groups of anyons. Op- erations are performed on these by exchanging the anyons. One might argue that, in order to have as many simple single qubit operations as possible, the number of anyons per group should be maximized. However, we show that there is a maximal number of particles per qubit, namely 4, and more generally a maximal number of particles for qudits of dimension d. We also look at the possibility of having topological qubits for which one can perform two-qubit gates without leakage into non-computational states. It turns out that the requirement that all two-qubit gates are leakage free is very restrictive and this property can only be realized for two-qubit systems related to Ising-like anyon models, which do not allow for universal quantum computation by braiding. Our results follow directly from the representation theory of braid groups which means they are valid for all anyon models. We also make some remarks on generalizations to other exchange groups.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Lefschetz Contact Manifolds and Odd Dimensional Symplectic Geometry

In the literature, there are two different versions of Hard Lefschetz theorems for a compact Sasakian manifold. The first version, due to Kacimi-Alaoui, asserts that the basic cohomology groups of a compact Sasakian manifold satisfies the transverse Lefschetz property. The second version, established far more recently by Cappelletti-Montano, De Nicola, and Yudin, holds for the De Rham cohomology groups of a compact Sasakian manifold. In the current paper, using the formalism of odd dimensional symplectic geometry, we prove a Hard Lefschetz theorem for compact K-contact manifolds, which implies immediately that the two existing versions of Hard Lefschetz theorems are mathematically equivalent to each other. Our method sheds new light on the Hard Lefschetz property of a Sasakian manifold. It enables us to give a simple construction of simply-connected K-contact manifolds without any Sasakian structures in any dimension ≥ 9, and answer an open question asked by Boyer and late Galicki concerning the existence of such examples

Profinite isomorphisms and fixed-point properties

We describe a flexible construction that produces triples of finitely generated, residually finite groups $M\hookrightarrow P \hookrightarrow \Gamma$, where the maps induce isomorphisms of profinite completions $\widehat{M}\cong\widehat{P}\cong\widehat{\Gamma}$, but $M$ and $\Gamma$ have Serre's property FA while $P$ does not. In this construction, $P$ is finitely presented and $\Gamma$ is of type ${\rm{F}}_\infty$. More generally, given any positive integer $d$, one can demand that $M$ and $\Gamma$ have a fixed point whenever they act by semisimple isometries on a complete CAT$(0)$ space of dimension at most $d$, while $P$ acts without a fixed point on a tree.Comment: 10 pages, no figure

The 4-string Braid group B4B_4 has property RD and exponential mesoscopic rank

We prove that the braid group $B_4$ on 4 strings, as well as its central quotient $B_4/$, have the property RD of Haagerup-Jolissaint. It follows that the automorphism group \Aut(F_2) of the free group $F_2$ on 2 generators has property RD. We also prove that the braid group $B_4$ is a group of intermediate rank (of dimension 3). Namely, we show that both $B_4$ and its central quotient have exponential mesoscopic rank, i.e., that they contain exponentially many large flat balls which are not included in flats.Comment: reference added, minor correction

Infinite groups with fixed point properties

We construct finitely generated groups with strong fixed point properties. Let $\mathcal{X}_{ac}$ be the class of Hausdorff spaces of finite covering dimension which are mod-$p$ acyclic for at least one prime $p$. We produce the first examples of infinite finitely generated groups $Q$ with the property that for any action of $Q$ on any $X\in \mathcal{X}_{ac}$, there is a global fixed point. Moreover, $Q$ may be chosen to be simple and to have Kazhdan's property (T). We construct a finitely presented infinite group $P$ that admits no non-trivial action by diffeomorphisms on any smooth manifold in $\mathcal{X}_{ac}$. In building $Q$, we exhibit new families of hyperbolic groups: for each $n\geq 1$ and each prime $p$, we construct a non-elementary hyperbolic group $G_{n,p}$ which has a generating set of size $n+2$, any proper subset of which generates a finite $p$-group.Comment: Version 2: 29 pages. This is the final published version of the articl