Non-Abelian braiding of phonons from first principles*

Non-Abelian braiding of quasiparticles can encode information immune from environmental noise with the potential to realize topological quantum computation. Here we propose that phonons, a bosonic excitation of lattice vibrations, can carry non-Abelian charges in their band structures that can be braided using external stimuli. Taking some earthly abundant materials such as silicates and aluminium oxide as representative examples, we demonstrate that an external electric field or electrostatic doping can give rise to phonon band inversions that induce the redistribution of non-Abelian charges, leading to non-Abelian braiding of phonons. We show that phonons can be a primary platform to study non-Abelian braiding in the reciprocal space, and we expand the toolset to study such braiding processes.