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arXiv:1308.1407 · Physical Review B

Quantum phase transitions out of a Z2×Z2 topological phase

Saeed S. Jahromi, Seyed Farhad Masoudi, Mehdi Kargarian, Kai Phillip Schmidt

Published Dec 12, 2013• 20 citations
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Abstract

We investigate the low-energy spectral properties and robustness of the topological phase of color code, which is a quantum spin model for the aim of fault-tolerant quantum computation, in the presence of a uniform magnetic field or Ising interactions, using high-order series expansion and exact diagonalization. In a uniform magnetic field, we find first-order phase transitions in all field directions. In contrast, our results for the Ising interactions unveil that for strong enough Ising couplings, the ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ topological phase of color code breaks down to symmetry broken phases by first- or second-order phase transitions.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.88.214411

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We investigate the low-energy spectral properties and robustness of the topological phase of color code, which is a quantum spin model for the aim of fault-tolerant quantum computation, in the presence of a uniform magnetic field or Ising interactions, using high-order series expansion and exact diagonalization. In a uniform magnetic field, we find first-order phase transitions in all field directions. In contrast, our results for the Ising interactions unveil that for strong enough Ising couplings, the Z2\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fiZ2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fiZ2​ topological phase of color code breaks down to symmetry broken phases by first- or second-order phase transitions.
The robustness of the topological color code, which is a class of error-correcting quantum codes, is investigated under the influence of a uniform magnetic field on the honeycomb lattice. Our study relies on two high-order series expansions using perturbative continuous unitary transformations in the limit of low and high fields, exact diagonalization, and a classical approximation. We show that the topological color code in a single parallel field is isospectral to the Baxter-Wu model in a transverse field on the triangular lattice. It is found that the topological phase is stable up to a critical field beyond which it breaks down to the polarized phase by a first-order phase transition. The results also suggest that the topological color code is more robust than the toric code in the parallel magnetic field.
We investigate the stability of the topological phase of the toric code model in the presence of a uniform magnetic field by means of variational and high-order series expansion approaches. We find that when this perturbation is strong enough, the system undergoes a topological phase transition whose first- or second-order nature depends on the field orientation. When this transition is of second order, it is in the Ising universality class except for a special line on which the critical exponent driving the closure of the gap varies continuously, unveiling a new topological universality class.
We study a generalization of the two-dimensional transverse-field Ising model, combining both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic two-body interactions, that hosts exact global and local Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ gauge symmetries. Using exact diagonalization and stochastic series expansion quantum Monte Carlo methods, we confirm the existence of the topological phase in line with previous theoretical predictions. Our simulation results show that the transition between the confined topological phase and the deconfined paramagnetic phase is of first order, in contrast to the conventional Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ lattice gauge model in which the transition maps onto that of the standard Ising model and is continuous. We further generalize the model by replacing the transverse field on the gauge spins with a ferromagnetic XXXXXX interaction while keeping the local gauge symmetry intact. We find that the Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ topological phase remains stable, while the paramagnetic phase is replaced by a ferromagnetic phase. The topological-ferromagnetic quantum phase transition is also of first order. For both models, we discuss the low-energy spinon and vison excitations of the topological phase and their avoided level crossings associated with the first-order quantum phase transitions.
Although the topological order is known as a quantum order in quantum many-body systems, it seems that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between topological phases and quantum phases. As a well-known example, it has been shown that all one-dimensional (1D) quantum phases are topologically trivial [X. Chen et al., Phys. Rev. B 83, 035107 (2011)]. By such facts, it seems a challenging task to understand when a quantum phase transition between different topological models necessarily reveals different topological classes of them. In this paper, we make an attempt to consider this problem by studying a phase transition between two different quantum phases which have a universal topological phase. We define a Hamiltonian as interpolation of the toric code model with Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ topological order and the color code model with ${Z}_{2}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{Z}_{2}$ topological order on a hexagonal lattice. We show such a model is exactly mapped to many copies of 1D quantum Ising model in transverse field by rewriting the Hamiltonian in a new complete basis. Consequently, we show that the universal topological phase of the color code model and the toric code model reflects in the 1D nature of the phase transition. We also consider the expectation value of Wilson loops by a perturbative calculation and show that behavior of the Wilson loop captures the nontopological nature of the quantum phase transition. The result on the point of phase transition also shows that the color code model is strongly robust against the toric code model.
We investigate the quantum robustness of the topological order in the toric code on the honeycomb lattice in the presence of a uniform parallel field. For a field in z z -direction, the low-energy physics is in the flux-free sector and can be mapped to the transverse-field Ising model on the honeycomb lattice. One finds a second-order quantum phase transition in the 3D Ising ^\star ⋆ universality class for both signs of the field. The same is true for a postive field in x x -direction where an analogue mapping in the charge-free sector yields a ferromagnetic transverse-field Ising model on the triangular lattice and the phase transition is still 3D Ising ^\star ⋆ . In contrast, for negative x x -field, the charge-free sector is mapped to the highly frustrated antiferromagnetic transverse-field Ising model on the triangular lattice which is known to host a quantum phase transition in the 3D XY ^\star ⋆ universality class. Further, the charge-free sector does not always contain the low-energy physics for negative x x -fields and a first-order phase transition to the polarized phase in the charge-full sector takes place at larger negative field values. We quantify the location of this transition by comparing quantum Monte Carlo simulations and high-field series expansions. The full extension of the topological phase in the presence of x x - and z z -fields is determined by perturbative linked-cluster expansions using a full graph decomposition. Extrapolating the high-order series of the charge and the flux gap allows to estimate critical exponents of the gap closing. This analysis indicates that the topological order breaks down by critical lines of 3D Ising ^\star ⋆ and 3D XY ^\star ⋆ type with interesting potential multi-critical crossing points. All findings for the toric code on the honeycomb lattice can be transferred exactly to the toric code on the triangular lattice.
A quantum Ising model in a transverse field is of the simplest quantum many-body systems used for studying universal properties of quantum phase transitions. Interestingly, it is well known that such phase transitions can be mapped to topological phase transitions in toric code models. Therefore, one can expect that well-known properties of the transverse Ising model are used for characterizing topological phase transitions in toric code models. In this paper, we consider the magnetization of the Ising model and show, while it is a local order parameter, it is mapped to a nonlocal order parameter on the topological side. Consequently, we introduce a string order parameter for topological phase transitions in toric code models defined on different lattices with different dimensions in the presence of a uniform magnetic field. Since such a string order parameter is dual of the Ising order parameter with well-known properties, it leads to a topological (nonlocal) characterization of phase transition in the toric code model in uniform field. Our results show that although topological phase transitions do not follow a symmetry-breaking mechanism, it might still be possible to use concepts of symmetry-breaking phase transitions for topological ones by finding suitable mappings.