Braiding Majorana zero modes using quantum dots

We discuss a network of Kitaev wires coupled to several individually-tunable quantum dots as an extension of the recent experiments on a quantum dot coupled to a nanowire hosting Majorana zero modes [M. T. Deng et al., Science 354, 1557 (2016); Phys. Rev. B 98, 085125 (2018)]. The setup features localized Majorana modes with exact zero energy and we show that they can be manipulated by solely acting on the quantum dots. A braiding process can be obtained by arranging three wires as a trijunction and a charge readout of the quantum dots can be used to reveal the non-Abelian statistics of Majorana zero modes. The setup can be scaled up to serve the more advanced purposes of topological quantum computation.