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arXiv:2305.17525 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Partially topological phase in a quantum loop gas model with tension and pressure

Jahanfar Abouie, Mohammad Hossein Zarei

Published Oct 18, 2023• 2 citations

Abstract

Enhancing robustness of topological orders against perturbations is one of the main goals in topological quantum computing. Since the kinetic of excitations is in conflict with the robustness of topological orders, any mechanism that reduces the mobility of excitations will be in favor of robustness. A strategy in this direction is adding frustration to topological systems. In this paper we consider a frustrated toric code on a kagome lattice, and show that although increasing the strength of perturbation reduces the topological order of the system, it cannot destroy it completely. Our frustrated toric code is indeed a quantum loop gas model with string tension and pressure which their competition leads to a partially topological phase (PTP) in which the excitations are restricted to move in particular sublattices. In this phase the ground state is a product of many copies of fluctuating loop states corresponding to quasi-one-dimensional ladders. By defining a nonlocal matrix order parameter and studying the behavior of ground-state global entanglement, we distinguish the PTP from the standard topological phase. The partial mobility of excitations in our system is reminiscent of fracton codes with restricted mobility, and therefore our results propose an alternative way for making such a restriction in three dimensions.

DOI: 10.1103/physrevb.108.165133

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Enhancing robustness of topological orders against perturbations is one of the main goals in topological quantum computing. Since the kinetic of excitations is in conflict with the robustness of topological orders, any mechanism that reduces the mobility of excitations will be in favor of robustness. A strategy in this direction is adding frustration to topological systems. In this paper we consider a frustrated toric code on a kagome lattice, and show that although increasing the strength of perturbation reduces the topological order of the system, it cannot destroy it completely. Our frustrated toric code is indeed a quantum loop gas model with string tension and pressure which their competition leads to a partially topological phase (PTP) in which the excitations are restricted to move in particular sublattices. In this phase the ground state is a product of many copies of fluctuating loop states corresponding to quasi-one-dimensional ladders. By defining a nonlocal matrix order parameter and studying the behavior of ground-state global entanglement, we distinguish the PTP from the standard topological phase. The partial mobility of excitations in our system is reminiscent of fracton codes with restricted mobility, and therefore our results propose an alternative way for making such a restriction in three dimensions.

We study the stability of topological order against local perturbations by considering the effect of a magnetic field on a spin model--the toric code--which is in a topological phase. The model can be mapped onto a quantum loop gas where the perturbation introduces a bare loop tension. When the loop tension is small, the topological order survives. When it is large, it drives a continuous quantum phase transition into a magnetic state. The transition can be understood as the condensation of "magnetic" vortices, leading to confinement of the elementary "charge" excitations. We also show how the topological order breaks down when the system is coupled to an Ohmic heat bath and relate our results to error rates for topological quantum computations.

We introduce two-dimensional toric code models with additional long-range loop interactions. Our models preserve the topologically ordered ground states of the ordinary toric code, while confining anyons at zero temperature. For sufficiently long-ranged interactions, we argue that this confinement persists at finite temperatures, strongly constraining anyon mobility and giving rise to finite-temperature topological order. This topological phase acts as a self-correcting quantum memory and exhibits long-range entanglement. For shorter-ranged interactions, signatures of topological order survive only up to an exponentially large length scale at finite temperature, yielding a partially self-correcting quantum memory.

Typical topological systems undergo a topological phase transition in the presence of a strong enough perturbation. We propose an adjustable frustrated toric code with a ``topological line'' at which no phase transition happens in the system and the topological order is robust against a nonlinear perturbation of arbitrary strength. This important result is a consequence of the interplay between frustration and nonlinearity in our system, which also causes the emergence of other interesting phenomena such as reentrant topological phases and survival of the topological order under local projection operations. Our study opens a window towards more robust topological quantum codes which are the cornerstones of large-scale quantum computing.

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

{Z}_{2}

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.

Condensation of quantum loops naturally leads to topological phases with Abelian excitations. Here, I propose that non-Abelian topological phases can arise from merging two (or several) identical Abelian quantum loop condensates. I define merging through a symmetrization operation, which makes the two loop condensates indistinguishable, inducing the possibility of a topological degeneracy in the space of quasiparticles. To illustrate the construction, the case of two identical toric-code quantum loop gases is considered. A spin-1 model for the two-dimensional square lattice is presented for which the resulting merged state is the exact unique ground state. This Hamiltonian involves four-body interactions between spins located at the same plaquette or vertex, which are quadratic in the spin-1 operators. Vertex and plaquette interaction terms are not mutually commuting. The model displays gapped excitations that result from merging anyons in both toric-code copies. These excitations exhibit non-Abelian braiding properties.

We introduce a toric code model on the dice lattice which is exactly solvable and displays topological order at zero temperature. In the presence of a magnetic field, the flux dynamics is mapped to the highly frustrated transverse field Ising model on the kagome lattice. This correspondence suggests an intriguing disorder by disorder phenomenon in a topologically ordered system implying that the topological order is extremely robust due to the geometric frustration. Furthermore, a connection between fully frustrated transverse field Ising models and topologically ordered systems is demonstrated which opens an exciting physical playground due to the interplay of topological quantum order and geometric frustration.