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arXiv:2312.05079 · Physical Review Research

Simulating two-dimensional topological quantum phase transitions on a digital quantum computer

Yu-Jie Liu, Kirill Shtengel, Frank Pollmann

Published Dec 11, 2024• 13 citations
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Abstract

Efficient preparation of many-body ground states is key to harnessing the power of quantum computers in studying quantum many-body systems. In this work, we propose a simple method to design exact linear-depth parameterized quantum circuits which prepare a family of ground states across topological quantum phase transitions in 2D. We achieve this by constructing ground states represented by isometric tensor networks (isoTNS), which form a subclass of tensor network states that are efficiently preparable. By continuously tuning a parameter in the wavefunction, the many-body ground state undergoes quantum phase transitions, exhibiting distinct 2D quantum phases. We illustrate this by constructing an isoTNS path with bond dimension D = 2 interpolating between distinct symmetry-enriched topological (SET) phases. At the transition point, the wavefunction is related to a gapless point in the classical six-vertex model. Furthermore, the critical wavefunction supports a power-law correlation along one spatial direction while remaining long-range ordered in the other spatial direction. We provide an explicit parametrized local quantum circuit for the path and show that the 2D isoTNS can also be efficiently simulated by a holographic quantum algorithm requiring only an 1D array of qubits. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.6.043256

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Efficient preparation of many-body ground states is key to harnessing the power of quantum computers in studying quantum many-body systems. In this work, we propose a simple method to design exact linear-depth parameterized quantum circuits which prepare a family of ground states across topological quantum phase transitions in 2D. We achieve this by constructing ground states represented by isometric tensor networks (isoTNS), which form a subclass of tensor network states that are efficiently preparable. By continuously tuning a parameter in the wavefunction, the many-body ground state undergoes quantum phase transitions, exhibiting distinct 2D quantum phases. We illustrate this by constructing an isoTNS path with bond dimension D = 2 interpolating between distinct symmetry-enriched topological (SET) phases. At the transition point, the wavefunction is related to a gapless point in the classical six-vertex model. Furthermore, the critical wavefunction supports a power-law correlation along one spatial direction while remaining long-range ordered in the other spatial direction. We provide an explicit parametrized local quantum circuit for the path and show that the 2D isoTNS can also be efficiently simulated by a holographic quantum algorithm requiring only an 1D array of qubits. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Simulating the dynamics of finite two-dimensional (2D) quantum many-body systems poses challenges to numerical methods due to the exponential growth of the many-body Hilbert space. In this work, the authors explore the variational power of recently introduced isometric tensor network states (isoTNS) --- a subset of general tensor-network states that allow an efficient numerical simulation. As a efficient tool to find ground states, the variational density matrix renormalization group (DMRG2{}_{2}2​) is introduced. It is then demonstrated that dynamical correlation functions for the 2D transverse field Ising model and the Kitaev Honeycomb model can be obtained.
Quantum phase transitions between different topologically ordered phases exhibit rich structures and are generically challenging to study in microscopic lattice models. In this paper, we propose a tensor-network solvable model that allows us to tune between different symmetry enriched topological (SET) phases. Concretely, we consider a decorated two-dimensional toric code model for which the ground state can be expressed as a two-dimensional tensor-network state with bond dimension D=3D=3D=3 and two tunable parameters. We find that the time-reversal (TR) symmetric system exhibits three distinct phases: (i) an SET toric code phase in which anyons transform nontrivially under TR, (ii) a toric code phase in which TR does not fractionalize, and (iii) a topologically trivial phase that is adiabatically connected to a product state. We characterize the different phases using the topological entanglement entropy and a membrane order parameter that distinguishes the two SET phases. Along the phase boundary between the SET toric code phase and the toric code phase, the model has an enhanced U(1)U(1)U(1) symmetry and the ground state is a quantum critical loop gas wavefunction whose squared norm is equivalent to the partition function of the classical O(2)O(2)O(2) model. By duality transformations, this tensor-network solvable model can also be used to describe transitions between SET double-semion phases and between ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}^{T}$ symmetry protected topological phases in two dimensions.
Recently, a class of tensor networks called isometric tensor network states (isoTNS) was proposed which generalizes the canonical form of matrix product states to tensor networks in higher dimensions. While this ansatz allows for efficient numerical computations, it remained unclear which phases admit an isoTNS representation. In this work, we show that two-dimensional string-net liquids, which represent a wide variety of topological phases including discrete gauge theories, admit an exact isoTNS representation. We further show that the isometric form can be preserved after applying a finite-depth local quantum circuit. Taken together, these results show that long-range entanglement by itself is not an obstruction to isoTNS representation and suggest that all two-dimensional gapped phases with gappable edges admit an isoTNS representation.
We construct parametrized isometric tensor network states -- referred to as skeletons -- that allow us to explore phases of abelian topological order and can be efficiently implemented on quantum processors. We obtain stable finite correlation length deformations of string-net fixed points, which are constructed both by conserving virtual symmetries of the tensor and by imposing local isometry constraints. They connect distinct topological phases via a shared critical point, thereby providing analytically tractable examples of phase transitions beyond anyon condensation. By mapping such classes of 2D tensor networks to 1D stochastic automata with local update rules, we show that expectation values of generalized Pauli strings of arbitrary weight can be efficiently computed using classical methods. Therefore these skeletons not only serve as an organizing principle for abelian topological order but also provide a non-trivial testbed for quantum processors.
Topologically ordered phases exhibit further complexity in the presence of global symmetries: Their anyonic excitations may exhibit different transformation patterns under these symmetries, leading to a classification in terms of symmetry-enriched topological orders. We develop a generic scheme to study an analogous situation for three-dimensional fracton phases by means of isometric tensor network states (isoTNS) with finite bond dimension, which allow us to tune phase transitions between different symmetry fractionalization patterns. We focus on the X-Cube model, a paradigmatic fracton model hosting two types of excitations: lineons, which are mobile in a single direction only, and fractons that are immobile on their own. By deforming the local tensors of the fixed point ground state, we find a family of exact wavefunctions for which the symmetry fractionalization under an anti-unitary symmetry on both types of excitations is directly visible. These wavefunctions are nonstabilizer states and have nonvanishing correlation lengths. They even exhibit power-law correlations at criticality between two symmetry-enriched topological orders. Furthermore, the isoTNS description allows for the explicit construction of a linear-depth quantum circuit to sequentially realize these exotic 3D states on a quantum processor, including a holographic scheme using only a pair of two-dimensional qubit arrays alongside measurements. Our approach provides a construction to enrich phases with exotic topological or fracton order and to study 3D quantum phase transitions with exact wavefunctions, and offers a tractable route to implement and characterize fracton order on quantum devices.
We propose a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for approximating the ground state of two-dimensional quantum systems using an isometric tensor network ansatz, which maps naturally to quantum circuits. Inspired by the density matrix renormalization group, we optimize tensors sequentially by diagonalizing a series of effective Hamiltonians. These are constructed using a tomography-inspired method on a qubit subset whose size depends only on the bond dimension. Our approach leverages quantum computers to enable accurate solutions without relying on approximate contractions, circumventing the exponential complexity faced by classical techniques. We demonstrate our method on the two-dimensional (2D) transverse-field Ising model, achieving ground-state optimization on up to 25 qubits with modest quantum overhead -- significantly less than standard solutions based on variational quantum eigensolvers. Overall, our results offer a path towards scalable variational quantum algorithms in both noisy and fault-tolerant regimes.