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arXiv:1111.5817 · Physical Review Letters

Gapless Hamiltonians for the Toric Code Using the Projected Entangled Pair State Formalism

Carlos García-Gutiérrez Fernández, Norbert Schuch, Michael M. Wolf, J. I. Cirac, David Pérez-Garcı́a

Published Dec 26, 2012• 25 citations
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Abstract

We study Hamiltonians which have Kitaev's toric code as a ground state, and show how to construct a Hamiltonian which shares the ground space of the toric code, but which has gapless excitations with a continuous spectrum in the thermodynamic limit. Our construction is based on the framework of projected entangled pair states, and can be applied to a large class of two-dimensional systems to obtain gapless "uncle Hamiltonians."

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.109.260401

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We study Hamiltonians which have Kitaev's toric code as a ground state, and show how to construct a Hamiltonian which shares the ground space of the toric code, but which has gapless excitations with a continuous spectrum in the thermodynamic limit. Our construction is based on the framework of projected entangled pair states, and can be applied to a large class of two-dimensional systems to obtain gapless "uncle Hamiltonians."
We present here a procedure to obtain the Hamiltonians of the toric code and Kitaev quantum double models as the low-energy limits of entirely two-body Hamiltonians. Our construction makes use of a new type of perturbation gadget based on error-detecting subsystem codes. The procedure is motivated by a projected entangled pair states (PEPS) description of the target models, and reproduces the target models' behavior using only couplings that are natural in terms of the original Hamiltonians. This allows our construction to capture the symmetries of the target models.
We develop tangent space methods for projected entangled-pair states (PEPS) that provide direct access to the low-energy sector of strongly-correlated two-dimensional quantum systems. More specifically, we construct a variational ansatz for elementary excitations on top of PEPS ground states that allows for computing gaps, dispersion relations, and spectral weights directly in the thermodynamic limit. Solving the corresponding variational problem requires the evaluation of momentum transformed two-point and three-point correlation functions on a PEPS background, which we can compute efficiently by using a contraction scheme. As an application we study the spectral properties of the magnons of the Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki model on the square lattice and the anyonic excitations in a perturbed version of Kitaev's toric code.
In many physical scenarios, close relations between the bulk properties of quantum systems and theories associated with their boundaries have been observed. In this work, we provide an exact duality mapping between the bulk of a quantum spin system and its boundary using projected entangled-pair states. This duality associates to every region a Hamiltonian on its boundary, in such a way that the entanglement spectrum of the bulk corresponds to the excitation spectrum of the boundary Hamiltonian. We study various specific models: a deformed AKLT model [I. Affleck, T. Kennedy, E. H. Lieb, and H. Tasaki, Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 799 (1987)], an Ising-type model [F. Verstraete, M. M. Wolf, D. Perez-Garcia, and J. I. Cirac, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 220601 (2006)], and Kitaev's toric code [A. Kitaev, Ann. Phys. 303, 2 (2003)], both in finite ladders and in infinite square lattices. In the second case, some of those models display quantum phase transitions. We find that a gapped bulk phase with local order corresponds to a boundary Hamiltonian with local interactions, whereas critical behavior in the bulk is reflected on a diverging interaction length of the boundary Hamiltonian. Furthermore, topologically ordered states yield nonlocal Hamiltonians. Because our duality also associates a boundary operator to any operator in the bulk, it in fact provides a full holographic framework for the study of quantum many-body systems via their boundary.
We develop and investigate several quantum many-body spin models of use for topological quantum information processing and storage. These models fall into two categories: those that are designed to be more realistic than alternative models with similar phenomenology, and those that are designed to have richer phenomenology than related models. In the first category, we present a procedure to obtain the Hamiltonians of the toric code and Kitaev quantum double models as the perturbative low-energy limits of entirely two-body Hamiltonians. This construction reproduces the target models' behavior using only couplings which are natural in terms of the original Hamiltonians. As an extension of this work, we construct parent Hamiltonians involving only local 2-body interactions for a broad class of Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS). We define a perturbative Hamiltonian with a finite order low energy effective Hamiltonian that is a gapped, frustration-free parent Hamiltonian for an encoded version of a desired PEPS. For topologically ordered PEPS, the ground space of the low energy effective Hamiltonian is shown to be in the same phase as the desired state to all orders of perturbation theory. We then move on to define models that generalize the phenomenology of several well-known systems. We first define generalized cluster states based on finite group algebras, and investigate properties of these states including their PEPS representations, global symmetries, relationship to the Kitaev quantum double models, and possible applications. Finally, we propose a generalization of the color codes based on finite groups. For non-Abelian groups, the resulting model supports non-Abelian anyonic quasiparticles and topological order. We examine the properties of these models such as their relationship to Kitaev quantum double models, quasiparticle spectrum, and boundary structure.
We study projected entangled pair states (PEPS) with continuous virtual symmetries, i.e., symmetries in the virtual degrees of freedom, through an elementary class of models with SU(2)\mathrm{SU}(2)SU(2) symmetry. Discrete symmetries of that kind have previously allowed for a comprehensive explanation of topological order in the PEPS formalism. We construct local parent Hamiltonians whose ground space with open boundaries is exactly parametrized by the PEPS wave function, and show how the ground state can be made unique by a suitable choice of boundary conditions. We also find that these models exhibit a logarithmic correction to the entanglement entropy and an extensive ground space degeneracy on systems with periodic boundaries, which suggests that they do not describe conventional gapped topological phases, but either critical models or some other exotic phase.
Given a tensor network state, how can we determine conserved operators (including Hamiltonians) for which the state is an eigenstate? We answer this question by presenting a method to extract geometrically kkk-local conserved operators that have the given infinite projected entangled pair state (iPEPS) in 2D as an (approximate) eigenstate. The key ingredient is the evaluation of the static structure factors of multi-site operators through differentiating the generating function. These generating functions define a manifold of the given tensor network state deformed by some parameters, endowed with a quantum geometry, where conserved operators correspond to vanishing fidelity susceptibility. Despite the approximation errors, we show that our method is still able to extract from exact or variational iPEPS to good precision both frustration-free and non-frustration-free parent Hamiltonians that are beyond the standard construction and obtain better locality. In particular, we find a 4-site-plaquette local Hamiltonian that approximately has the short-range RVB state as the ground state. Moreover, we find a Hamiltonian for which the deformed toric code state at arbitrary string tension is an excited eigenstate with the same energy, thereby potentially realizing quantum many-body scars.