{
  "id": "oai:papers.qnfo.org:synthetic-vacuum-photonic-lattices-a-quantitative-feasibility-analysis-of-room-t",
  "slug": "synthetic-vacuum-photonic-lattices-a-quantitative-feasibility-analysis-of-room-t",
  "title": "Synthetic Vacuum Photonic Lattices: A Quantitative Feasibility Analysis of Room-Temperature, Gauge-Protected Fibonacci Anyon Computing",
  "authors": [
    "Rowan Brad Quni-Gudzinas"
  ],
  "abstract": "Large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computation currently requires cryogenic operation and an active error-correction layer whose ancilla, syndrome-extraction and magic-state overheads dominate the resource budget of any scalable processor. A conjectured alternative is a room-temperature solid-state photonic lattice—a synthetic vacuum—engineered so that an emergent SU(2)-like gauge symmetry hosts Fibonacci anyons as edge excitations, with braiding implementing universal logic protected by the medium rather than by active correction. The specific gap addressed here is that no published analysis quantifies the physical conditions such a substrate must satisfy: whether it can be thermally stable at 300 K, and whether gauge constraints suppress error channels or merely relocate them. We model the lattice as a gapped photonic band structure with a topological edge sector, derive the thermal-stability condition, perform an error-channel accounting by gauge transformation property, and derive a per-hop loss budget for braiding operations. We find that a gap Δ ≥ 15 k_B T ≈ 0.388 eV (photon frequency ≈ 93.8 THz, wavelength ≈ 3.20 mum) holds the probability of any thermally excited stray anyon below ≈ 6.1× 10^-4 for a 10³-mode device; that gauge invariance reduces a physical error rate p only to p_eff ≈ (2/3)p, so the raw photonic error rate must reach 1.5× 10^-4 to match the 10^-4 logical error of active flag-qubit schemes; and that a 10^-6 logical error over a 100-hop braid requires a per-hop loss probability of 3× 10^-7. Gauge protection is a rate reducer, not a replacement for correction, and the proposal remains at the level of analytical feasibility.",
  "abstract_markdown": "Large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computation currently requires cryogenic operation and an active error-correction layer whose ancilla, syndrome-extraction and magic-state overheads dominate the resource budget of any scalable processor. A conjectured alternative is a room-temperature solid-state photonic lattice—a *synthetic vacuum*—engineered so that an emergent SU(2)-like gauge symmetry hosts Fibonacci anyons as edge excitations, with braiding implementing universal logic protected by the medium rather than by active correction. The specific gap addressed here is that no published analysis quantifies the physical conditions such a substrate must satisfy: whether it can be thermally stable at 300 K, and whether gauge constraints suppress error channels or merely relocate them. We model the lattice as a gapped photonic band structure with a topological edge sector, derive the thermal-stability condition, perform an error-channel accounting by gauge transformation property, and derive a per-hop loss budget for braiding operations. We find that a gap $\\Delta \\geq 15\\,k_B T \\approx 0.388\\ \\mathrm{eV}$ (photon frequency $\\approx 93.8\\ \\mathrm{THz}$, wavelength $\\approx 3.20\\ \\mu\\mathrm{m}$) holds the probability of any thermally excited stray anyon below $\\approx 6.1\\times 10^{-4}$ for a $10^3$-mode device; that gauge invariance reduces a physical error rate $p$ only to $p_{\\mathrm{eff}} \\approx (2/3)p$, so the raw photonic error rate must reach $1.5\\times 10^{-4}$ to match the $10^{-4}$ logical error of active flag-qubit schemes; and that a $10^{-6}$ logical error over a 100-hop braid requires a per-hop loss probability of $3\\times 10^{-7}$. Gauge protection is a rate reducer, not a replacement for correction, and the proposal remains at the level of analytical feasibility.",
  "date": "2026-11-02",
  "first_published": "2026-11-02",
  "last_revised": "2026-11-02T00:00:00Z",
  "modified": "2026-11-02T00:00:00Z",
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  "url": "https://papers.qnfo.org/papers/synthetic-vacuum-photonic-lattices-a-quantitative-feasibility-analysis-of-room-t",
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        "name": "Rowan Brad Quni-Gudzinas",
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    "titles": [
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        "title": "Synthetic Vacuum Photonic Lattices: A Quantitative Feasibility Analysis of Room-Temperature, Gauge-Protected Fibonacci Anyon Computing"
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        "description": "Large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computation currently requires cryogenic operation and an active error-correction layer whose ancilla, syndrome-extraction and magic-state overheads dominate the resource budget of any scalable processor. A conjectured alternative is a room-temperature solid-state photonic lattice—a synthetic vacuum—engineered so that an emergent SU(2)-like gauge symmetry hosts Fibonacci anyons as edge excitations, with braiding implementing universal logic protected by the medium rather than by active correction. The specific gap addressed here is that no published analysis quantifies the physical conditions such a substrate must satisfy: whether it can be thermally stable at 300 K, and whether gauge constraints suppress error channels or merely relocate them. We model the lattice as a gapped photonic band structure with a topological edge sector, derive the thermal-stability condition, perform an error-channel accounting by gauge transformation property, and derive a per-hop loss budget for braiding operations. We find that a gap Δ ≥ 15 k_B T ≈ 0.388 eV (photon frequency ≈ 93.8 THz, wavelength ≈ 3.20 mum) holds the probability of any thermally excited stray anyon below ≈ 6.1× 10^-4 for a 10³-mode device; that gauge invariance reduces a physical error rate p only to p_eff ≈ (2/3)p, so the raw photonic error rate must reach 1.5× 10^-4 to match the 10^-4 logical error of active flag-qubit schemes; and that a 10^-6 logical error over a 100-hop braid requires a per-hop loss probability of 3× 10^-7. Gauge protection is a rate reducer, not a replacement for correction, and the proposal remains at the level of analytical feasibility.",
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