Direct observation of braiding of Majorana-like zero modes in real space

Majorana zero modes (MZMs) lie at the heart of fault-tolerant topological quantum computation, where their non-Abelian braiding statistics enable logical operations intrinsically immune to local perturbations and decoherence. Analogs of MZMs, known as Majorana-like zero modes (MLZMs), have recently been proposed in artificial lattices. Despite this progress, a direct real-space observation of the braiding process has remained elusive, representing a fundamental gap between theoretical prediction and experimental realization. Here, we demonstrate the direct observation of the braiding of MLZMs. We identify boundary-bound MLZMs (BMLZMs) that are spatially well separated and can be adiabatically transported along the sample boundary through controlled modulation of the Kekulé phase. By mapping the acoustic-field evolution, we construct the complete real-space trajectory and observe the phase accumulation characteristic of the braiding process. These results establish BMLZMs as a new class of topological excitations and provide a directly observable analog of Majorana braiding dynamics.