Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1803.10217 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Exact description of the boundary theory of the Kitaev toric code with open boundary conditions

Yevheniia Cheipesh, Lorenzo Cevolani, Stefan K. Kehrein

Published Jan 22, 2019• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the Kitaev toric code with specific open boundary conditions. Such a physical system has a highly degenerate ground state determined by the degrees of freedom localized at the boundaries. We can write down an explicit expression for the ground state of this model. Based on this, the entanglement properties of the model are studied for two types of bipartition: one, where subsystem $A$ is completely contained in $B$; and the second, where the boundary of the system is shared between $A$ and $B$. In the former configuration, the entanglement entropy is the same as for the periodic boundary condition case, which means that the bulk is completely decoupled from the boundary on distances larger than the correlation length. In the latter, deviations from the torus configuration appear due to the edge states and lead to an increase of the entropy. We then determine an effective theory for the boundary of the system. In the case where we apply a small magnetic field as a perturbation, the degrees of freedom on the boundary acquire a dispersion relation. The system can there be described by a Hamiltonian of the Ising type with a generic spin-exchange term.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.99.024422

Related papers

Entanglement negativity and topological order

Yirun Arthur Lee, Guifré Vidal

We use the entanglement negativity, a measure of entanglement for mixed states, to probe the structure of entanglement in the ground state of a topologically ordered system. Through analytical calculations of the negativity in the ground state(s) of the toric code model, we explicitly show that the pure-state entanglement of a region $A$ and its complement $B$ is the sum of two types of contributions: boundary entanglement and long-range entanglement. Boundary entanglement is seen to be insensitive to tracing out the degrees of freedom in the interior of regions $A$ and $B$, and therefore it entangles only degrees of freedom in $A$ and $B$ that are close to their common boundary. We recover the well-known result that boundary entanglement is proportional to the size of each boundary separating $A$ and $B$ and it includes an additive, universal correction. The second, long-range, contribution to pure-state entanglement appears only when $A$ and $B$ are noncontractible regions (e.g., on a torus) and it is seen to be destroyed when tracing out a noncontractible region in the interior of $A$ or $B$. In the toric code, only the long-range contribution to the entanglement depends on the specific ground state under consideration.

arXiv:1306.5711•Physical Review A•Oct 16, 2013•130 citations

Entanglement spectrum and boundary theories with projected entangled-pair states

J. I. Cirac, Didier Poilblanc, Norbert Schuch +1 more

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.

arXiv:1103.3427•Physical Review B•Jun 29, 2011•297 citations

Entanglement properties of topological color codes

Mehdi Kargarian

The entanglement properties of a class of topological stabilizer states, the so-called topological color codes defined on a two-dimensional lattice or 2-colex, are calculated. The topological entropy is used to measure the entanglement of different bipartitions of the 2-colex. The dependency of the ground-state degeneracy on the genus of the surface shows that the color code can support a topological order, and the contribution of the color in its structure makes it interesting to compare with Kitaev's toric code. While a qubit is maximally entangled with the rest of the system, two qubits are no longer entangled showing that the color code is genuinely multipartite entangled. For a convex region, it is found that entanglement entropy depends only on the degrees of freedom living on the boundary of two subsystems. The boundary scaling of entropy is supplemented with a topological subleading term, which for a color code defined on a compact surface, is twice over the toric code. From the entanglement entropy we construct a set of bipartitions in which the diverging term arising from the boundary term is washed out, and the remaining nonvanishing term will have a topological nature. Besides the color code on the compact surface, we also analyze the entanglement properties of a version of color code with a border, i.e., triangular color code.

arXiv:0809.4276•Physical Review A•Dec 5, 2008•30 citations

Quantum phase transitions in the K -layer Ising toric code

Lukas Schamriß, Lea Lenke, Matthias Mühlhauser +1 more

We investigate the quantum phase diagram of the $K$-layer Ising toric code corresponding to $K$ layers of two-dimensional toric codes coupled by Ising interactions. While for small Ising interactions the system displays ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}^{K}$ topological order originating from the toric codes in each layer, the system shows ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ topological order in the high-Ising limit. The latter is demonstrated for general $K$ by deriving an effective low-energy model in $K\mathrm{th}$-order degenerate perturbation theory, which is given as an effective anisotropic single-layer toric code in terms of collective pseudospins 1/2 referring to the two ground states of isolated Ising chain segments. For the specific cases $K=3$ and $K=4$ we apply high-order series expansions to determine the gap series in the low- and high-Ising limit. Extrapolation of the elementary energy gaps gives convincing evidence that the ground-state phase diagram consists of a single quantum critical point and our findings suggest a quantum phase transition in the 3D Ising* universality class for both $K$ separating both types of topological order, which is consistent with former findings for the bilayer Ising toric code.

arXiv:2201.10384•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•May 26, 2022•4 citations

Exact results on the quench dynamics of the entanglement entropy in the toric code

Armin Rahmani, Claudio Chamon

We study quantum quenches in the two-dimensional Kitaev toric code model and compute exactly the time-dependent entanglement entropy of the nonequilibrium wave function evolving from a paramagnetic initial state with the toric code Hamiltonian. We find that the area law survives at all times. Adding disorder to the toric code couplings makes the entanglement entropy per unit boundary length saturate to disorder-independent values at long times and in the thermodynamic limit. There are order-one corrections to the area law from the corners in the subsystem boundary but the topological entropy remains zero at all times. We argue that breaking the integrability with a small magnetic field could change the area law to a volume scaling as expected of thermalized states but is not sufficient for forming topological entanglement due to the presence of an excess energy and a finite density of defects.

arXiv:1007.2014•Physical Review B•Oct 5, 2010•24 citations

Boundary degeneracy of topological order

Juven Wang, Xiao-Gang Wen

We introduce the concept of boundary degeneracy, as the ground state degeneracy of topologically ordered states on a compact orientable spatial manifold with gapped boundaries. We emphasize that the boundary degeneracy provides richer information than the bulk degeneracy. Beyond the bulk-edge correspondence, we find the ground state degeneracy of the fully gapped edge modes depends on boundary gapping conditions. By associating different types of boundary gapping conditions as different ways of particle or quasiparticle condensations on the boundary, we develop an analytic theory of gapped boundaries. By Chern-Simons theory, this allows us to derive the ground state degeneracy formula in terms of boundary gapping conditions, which encodes more than the fusion algebra of fractionalized quasiparticles. We apply our theory to Kitaev's toric code and Levin-Wen string-net models. We predict that the ${Z}_{2}$ toric code and ${Z}_{2}$ double-semion model [more generally, the ${Z}_{k}$ gauge theory and the $U{(1)}_{k}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}U{(1)}_{\ensuremath{-}k}$ nonchiral fractional quantum Hall state at even integer $k$] can be numerically and experimentally distinguished, by measuring their boundary degeneracy on an annulus or a cylinder.

arXiv:1212.4863•Physical Review B•Mar 13, 2015•97 citations
In this paper, we consider the Kitaev toric code with specific open boundary conditions. Such a physical system has a highly degenerate ground state determined by the degrees of freedom localized at the boundaries. We can write down an explicit expression for the ground state of this model. Based on this, the entanglement properties of the model are studied for two types of bipartition: one, where subsystem AAA is completely contained in BBB; and the second, where the boundary of the system is shared between AAA and BBB. In the former configuration, the entanglement entropy is the same as for the periodic boundary condition case, which means that the bulk is completely decoupled from the boundary on distances larger than the correlation length. In the latter, deviations from the torus configuration appear due to the edge states and lead to an increase of the entropy. We then determine an effective theory for the boundary of the system. In the case where we apply a small magnetic field as a perturbation, the degrees of freedom on the boundary acquire a dispersion relation. The system can there be described by a Hamiltonian of the Ising type with a generic spin-exchange term.
We use the entanglement negativity, a measure of entanglement for mixed states, to probe the structure of entanglement in the ground state of a topologically ordered system. Through analytical calculations of the negativity in the ground state(s) of the toric code model, we explicitly show that the pure-state entanglement of a region AAA and its complement BBB is the sum of two types of contributions: boundary entanglement and long-range entanglement. Boundary entanglement is seen to be insensitive to tracing out the degrees of freedom in the interior of regions AAA and BBB, and therefore it entangles only degrees of freedom in AAA and BBB that are close to their common boundary. We recover the well-known result that boundary entanglement is proportional to the size of each boundary separating AAA and BBB and it includes an additive, universal correction. The second, long-range, contribution to pure-state entanglement appears only when AAA and BBB are noncontractible regions (e.g., on a torus) and it is seen to be destroyed when tracing out a noncontractible region in the interior of AAA or BBB. In the toric code, only the long-range contribution to the entanglement depends on the specific ground state under consideration.
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.
The entanglement properties of a class of topological stabilizer states, the so-called topological color codes defined on a two-dimensional lattice or 2-colex, are calculated. The topological entropy is used to measure the entanglement of different bipartitions of the 2-colex. The dependency of the ground-state degeneracy on the genus of the surface shows that the color code can support a topological order, and the contribution of the color in its structure makes it interesting to compare with Kitaev's toric code. While a qubit is maximally entangled with the rest of the system, two qubits are no longer entangled showing that the color code is genuinely multipartite entangled. For a convex region, it is found that entanglement entropy depends only on the degrees of freedom living on the boundary of two subsystems. The boundary scaling of entropy is supplemented with a topological subleading term, which for a color code defined on a compact surface, is twice over the toric code. From the entanglement entropy we construct a set of bipartitions in which the diverging term arising from the boundary term is washed out, and the remaining nonvanishing term will have a topological nature. Besides the color code on the compact surface, we also analyze the entanglement properties of a version of color code with a border, i.e., triangular color code.
We investigate the quantum phase diagram of the KKK-layer Ising toric code corresponding to KKK layers of two-dimensional toric codes coupled by Ising interactions. While for small Ising interactions the system displays Z2K{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}^{K}Z2K​ topological order originating from the toric codes in each layer, the system shows Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ topological order in the high-Ising limit. The latter is demonstrated for general KKK by deriving an effective low-energy model in KthK\mathrm{th}Kth-order degenerate perturbation theory, which is given as an effective anisotropic single-layer toric code in terms of collective pseudospins 1/2 referring to the two ground states of isolated Ising chain segments. For the specific cases K=3K=3K=3 and K=4K=4K=4 we apply high-order series expansions to determine the gap series in the low- and high-Ising limit. Extrapolation of the elementary energy gaps gives convincing evidence that the ground-state phase diagram consists of a single quantum critical point and our findings suggest a quantum phase transition in the 3D Ising* universality class for both KKK separating both types of topological order, which is consistent with former findings for the bilayer Ising toric code.
We study quantum quenches in the two-dimensional Kitaev toric code model and compute exactly the time-dependent entanglement entropy of the nonequilibrium wave function evolving from a paramagnetic initial state with the toric code Hamiltonian. We find that the area law survives at all times. Adding disorder to the toric code couplings makes the entanglement entropy per unit boundary length saturate to disorder-independent values at long times and in the thermodynamic limit. There are order-one corrections to the area law from the corners in the subsystem boundary but the topological entropy remains zero at all times. We argue that breaking the integrability with a small magnetic field could change the area law to a volume scaling as expected of thermalized states but is not sufficient for forming topological entanglement due to the presence of an excess energy and a finite density of defects.
We introduce the concept of boundary degeneracy, as the ground state degeneracy of topologically ordered states on a compact orientable spatial manifold with gapped boundaries. We emphasize that the boundary degeneracy provides richer information than the bulk degeneracy. Beyond the bulk-edge correspondence, we find the ground state degeneracy of the fully gapped edge modes depends on boundary gapping conditions. By associating different types of boundary gapping conditions as different ways of particle or quasiparticle condensations on the boundary, we develop an analytic theory of gapped boundaries. By Chern-Simons theory, this allows us to derive the ground state degeneracy formula in terms of boundary gapping conditions, which encodes more than the fusion algebra of fractionalized quasiparticles. We apply our theory to Kitaev's toric code and Levin-Wen string-net models. We predict that the Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ toric code and Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ double-semion model [more generally, the Zk{Z}_{k}Zk​ gauge theory and the $U{(1)}_{k}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}U{(1)}_{\ensuremath{-}k}$ nonchiral fractional quantum Hall state at even integer kkk] can be numerically and experimentally distinguished, by measuring their boundary degeneracy on an annulus or a cylinder.