Can a strain yield a qubit?

A Josepshon qubit is designed via the application of a tensile strain to a topological insulator surface, sandwiched between two s-wave superconductors. The strain applied leads to a shift in Dirac point without changing the conducting states existing on the surface of a topological insulator. This strain applied can be tuned to form a $\pi $-junction in such a structure. Combining two such junctions in a ring architecture leads to the ground state of the ring being in a doubly degenerate state- ``0'' and ``1'' states of the qubit. A qubit designed this way is easily controlled via the tunable strain. We report on the conditions necessary to design such a qubit. Finally the operating time of a single qubit phase gate is derived.