Moving fictional particles could make quantum computers more efficient

Quantum computers need thousands of physical qubits to protect each logical qubit from errors, making efficient gate design critical. This work reframes the problem using Majorana fermions — exotic point-like objects that encode information in pairs — to choreograph fault-tolerant gates by physically moving these particles around each other. Numerical benchmarks show the approach outperforms the standard 'lattice surgery' technique for two-qubit gates under realistic near-term device conditions, potentially shrinking the hardware overhead needed for useful quantum computation.