Symplectic topological Kondo effect

Strongly correlated systems with the ability to harbor anyonic quasi-particles are of primary importance both for fundamental scientific interest and for quantum information technology. Specifically, the multi-channel and the topological Kondo effects were advocated in this context, however they require either perfect channel symmetry or the use of Majorana fermions. Here we propose a Majorana-free mesoscopic setup which implements the Kondo effect of the symplectic Lie group and can harbor emergent anyons (including Majorana fermions, Fibonacci anyons, and $mathbb Z_3$ parafermions) even in the absence of perfect channel symmetry. In addition to the detailed prescription of the implementation, we present the strong coupling solution by mapping the model to the multi-channel Kondo effect associated to an internal SU(2) symmetry and exploit conformal field theory (CFT) to predict the non-trivial scaling of a variety of observables, including conductance, as a function of temperature. This work does not only open the door for robust Kondo-based topological quantum computation, but also sheds light on the physics of strongly correlated materials with competing order parameters.