Qubits based on merons in magnetic nanodisks

Abstract

A meron is a classical topological soliton having a half topological charge. It could be materialized in a magnetic disk. However, it will become a quantum mechanical object when its size is of the order of nanometers. Here, we propose to use a nanoscale meron in a magnetic nanodisk as a qubit, where the up and down directions of the core spin are assigned to be the qubit states 0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\left\vert 0\right\rangle$$\end{document} and 1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\left\vert 1\right\rangle$$\end{document}. We first numerically show that a meron with the radius containing as small as 7 spins can be stabilized in a ferromagnetic nanodisk classically. Then, we show theoretically that universal quantum computation is possible based on merons by explicitly constructing the arbitrary phase-shift gate, Hadamard gate, and CNOT gate. They are executed by applying a magnetic field or spin-polarized current. Our results may be useful for the implementation of quantum computation based on topological spin textures in nanomagnets. Merons are spin textures with a half-unit topological charge found in chiral magnetic materials. Here, the authors show that merons with nanometer-scale size are stable and can be used to perform quantum computing gate operations by applying a magnetic field or spin-polarized current.