Building fracton phases by Majorana manipulation

Abstract

Fracton topological phases host fractionalized topological quasiparticles with restricted mobility, with promising applications to fault-tolerant quantum computation. While a variety of exactly solvable fracton models have been proposed, there is a need for platforms to realize them experimentally. We show that a rich set of fracton phases emerges in interacting Majorana band models whose building blocks are within experimental reach. Specifically, our Majorana constructions overcome a principal obstacle, namely, the implementation of the complicated spin cluster interactions underlying fracton stabilizer codes. The basic building blocks of the proposed constructions include Coulomb blockaded Majorana islands and weak interisland Majorana hybridizations. This setting produces a wide variety of fracton states and promises numerous opportunities for probing and controlling fracton phases experimentally. Our approach also reveals the relation between fracton phases and Majorana fermion codes and further generates a hierarchy of fracton spin liquids.