Protecting the Kitaev honeycomb model from external fields*

We propose an approach to generate many-body interactions from two-body interactions with stable cat states. Applied to the celebrated Kitaev honeycomb model, our approach opens a spectral gap in the gapless phase of the model without any external magnetic field. We confirm the non-Abelian topological properties of a generalized Kitaev model and demonstrate our approach's robustness to sources of error. Our work provides a complete framework for experimentally realizing and manipulating non-Abelian anyons, with direct application in topological quantum computation.