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arXiv:2002.11733

Thermal Stability of Dynamical Phase Transitions in Higher Dimensional Stabilizer Codes

Albert T. Schmitz

Published Feb 26, 2020• 1 citation
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Abstract

For all of the interest in dynamical phase transitions (DPT), it is still not clear the meaning or prevalence of these features in higher dimensional models. In this paper, we consider DPTs for stabilizer code models and quantum quenches between these models in higher dimensions, particularly $d=2,3$. We find that for many stabilizer codes, there exists a robust DPT to thermal noise which indicates the resilience of information stored in the ground space in the context of quantum error correction. That is, the critical temperature at which the DPT is lost corresponds to the theoretical upper-bound on the decoding rate for the code. We also discuss a generalization of the Wegner duality and how it can be used to characterize DPTs and other thermal properties.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2002.11733

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When a quantum system is quenched from its ground state, the time evolution can lead to nonanalytic behavior in the return rate at critical times tc{t}_{c}tc​. Such dynamical phase transitions (DPTs) can occur, in particular, for quenches between phases with different topological properties in Gaussian models. In this paper we discuss Loschmidt echos generalized to density matrices and obtain results for quenches in closed Gaussian models at finite temperatures as well as for open-system dynamics described by a Lindblad master equation. While cusps in the return rate are always smoothed out by finite temperatures we show that dissipative dynamics can be fine-tuned such that DPTs persist.
We discuss several thermodynamic criteria that have been introduced to characterize the thermal stability of a self-correcting quantum memory. We first examine the use of symmetry-breaking fields in analyzing the properties of self-correcting quantum memories in the thermodynamic limit; we show that the thermal expectation values of all logical operators vanish for any stabilizer and any subsystem code in any spatial dimension. On the positive side, we generalize the results of Alicki et al to obtain a general upper bound on the relaxation rate of a quantum memory at nonzero temperature, assuming that the quantum memory interacts via a Markovian master equation with a thermal bath. This upper bound is applicable to quantum memories based on either stabilizer or subsystem codes.
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Is the notion of a quantum computer (QC) resilient to thermal noise unphysical? We address this question from a constructive perspective and show that local quantum Hamiltonian models provide self-correcting QCs. To this end, we first give a sufficient condition on the connectedness of excitations for a stabilizer code model to be a self-correcting quantum memory. We then study the two main examples of topological stabilizer codes in arbitrary dimensions and establish their self-correcting capabilities. Also, we address the transversality properties of topological color codes, showing that six-dimensional color codes provide a self-correcting model that allows the transversal and local implementation of a universal set of operations in seven spatial dimensions. Finally, we give a procedure for initializing such quantum memories at finite temperature.