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:2405.19412

On stability of k-local quantum phases of matter

Ali Lavasani, Michael J. Gullans, Victor V. Albert, Maissam Barkeshli

Published May 29, 2024• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The current theoretical framework for topological phases of matter is based on the thermodynamic limit of a system with geometrically local interactions. A natural question is to what extent the notion of a phase of matter remains well-defined if we relax the constraint of geometric locality, and replace it with a weaker graph-theoretic notion of $k$-locality. As a step towards answering this question, we analyze the stability of the energy gap to perturbations for Hamiltonians corresponding to general quantum low-density parity-check codes, extending work of Bravyi and Hastings [Commun. Math. Phys. 307, 609 (2011)]. A corollary of our main result is that if there exist constants $\varepsilon_1,\varepsilon_2>0$ such that the size $Γ(r)$ of balls of radius $r$ on the interaction graph satisfy $Γ(r) = O(\exp(r^{1-\varepsilon_1}))$ and the local ground states of balls of radius $r\leρ^\ast = O(\log(n)^{1+\varepsilon_2})$ are locally indistinguishable, then the energy gap of the associated Hamiltonian is stable against local perturbations. This gives an almost exponential improvement over the $D$-dimensional Euclidean case, which requires $Γ(r) = O(r^D)$ and $ρ^\ast = O(n^α)$ for some $α> 0$. The approach we follow falls just short of proving stability of finite-rate qLDPC codes, which have $\varepsilon_1 = 0$; we discuss some strategies to extend the result to these cases. We discuss implications for the third law of thermodynamics, as $k$-local Hamiltonians can have extensive zero-temperature entropy.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2405.19412

Related papers

Low-Density Parity-Check Stabilizer Codes as Gapped Quantum Phases: Stability under Graph-Local Perturbations

Wojciech De Roeck, Vedika Khemani, Yaodong Li +2 more

We generalize the proof of stability of topological order, due to Bravyi, Hastings, and Michalakis, to stabilizer Hamiltonians corresponding to low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes without the restriction of geometric locality in Euclidean space. We consider Hamiltonians H 0 defined by ⟦ N , K , d ⟧ LDPC codes, which obey certain topological quantum order conditions: (i) code distance d ≥ c log  ( N ) , implying local indistinguishability of ground states, and (ii) a mild condition on local and global compatibility of ground states—these include good quantum LDPC codes and the toric code on a hyperbolic lattice, among others. We consider stability under weak perturbations that are quasilocal on the interaction graph defined by H 0 and that can be represented as sums of bounded-norm terms. As long as the local perturbation strength is smaller than a finite constant, we show that the perturbed Hamiltonian has well-defined spectral bands originating from the O ( 1 ) smallest eigenvalues of H 0 . The band originating from the smallest eigenvalue has 2 K states, is separated from the rest of the spectrum by a finite energy gap, and has exponentially narrow bandwidth δ = C N e − Θ ( d ) , which is tighter than the best-known bounds even in the Euclidean case. We also obtain that the new ground-state subspace is related to the initial-code subspace by a quasilocal unitary, allowing one to relate their physical properties. Our proof uses an iterative procedure that performs successive rotations to eliminate non-frustration-free terms in the Hamiltonian. Our results extend to quantum Hamiltonians built from classical LDPC codes, which give rise to stable symmetry-breaking phases. These results show that LDPC codes very generally define stable gapped quantum phases, even in the non-Euclidean setting, initiating a systematic study of such phases of matter.

arXiv:2411.02384•PRX Quantum•Jul 2, 2025•10 citations

Low-Density Parity-Check Codes as Stable Phases of Quantum Matter

Chao Yin, Andrew Lucas

Phases of matter with robust ground-state degeneracy, such as the quantum toric code, are known to be capable of robust quantum information storage. Here, we address the converse question: given a quantum error-correcting code, when does it define a stable gapped quantum phase of matter, whose ground-state degeneracy is robust against perturbations in the thermodynamic limit? We prove that a low-density parity-check (LDPC) code defines such a phase, robust against all few-body perturbations, if its code distance grows at least logarithmically in the number of degrees of freedom, and it exhibits “check soundness.” Many constant-rate quantum LDPC expander codes have such properties, and define stable phases of matter with a constant zero-temperature entropy density, violating the third law of thermodynamics. Our results also show that quantum toric-code phases are robust to spatially nonlocal few-body perturbations. Similarly, phases of matter defined by classical codes are stable against symmetric perturbations. In the classical setting, we present improved locality bounds on the quasiadiabatic evolution operator between two nearby states in the same code phase.

arXiv:2411.01002•PRX Quantum•Jul 2, 2025•13 citations

Quasi-Locality Bounds for Quantum Lattice Systems. Part II. Perturbations of Frustration-Free Spin Models with Gapped Ground States

Bruno Nachtergaele, Robert Sims, Amanda Young

Abstract We study the stability with respect to a broad class of perturbations of gapped ground-state phases of quantum spin systems defined by frustration-free Hamiltonians. The core result of this work is a proof using the Bravyi–Hastings–Michalakis (BHM) strategy that under a condition of local topological quantum order (LTQO), the bulk gap is stable under perturbations that decay at long distances faster than a stretched exponential. Compared to previous work, we expand the class of frustration-free quantum spin models that can be handled to include models with more general boundary conditions, and models with discrete symmetry breaking. Detailed estimates allow us to formulate sufficient conditions for the validity of positive lower bounds for the gap that are uniform in the system size and that are explicit to some degree. We provide a survey of the BHM strategy following the approach of Michalakis and Zwolak, with alterations introduced to accommodate more general than just periodic boundary conditions and more general lattices. We express the fundamental condition known as LTQO by means of an indistinguishability radius, which we introduce. Using the uniform finite-volume results, we then proceed to study the thermodynamic limit. We first study the case of a unique limiting ground state and then also consider models with spontaneous breaking of a discrete symmetry. In the latter case, LTQO cannot hold for all local observables. However, for perturbations that preserve the symmetry, we show stability of the gap and the structure of the broken symmetry phases. We prove that the GNS Hamiltonian associated with each pure state has a non-zero spectral gap above the ground state.

arXiv:2010.15337•Annales Henri Poincaré•Aug 14, 2021•30 citations

Perturbative Stability and Error-Correction Thresholds of Quantum Codes

Yaodong Li, Nicholas O’Dea, Vedika Khemani

Topologically ordered phases are stable to local perturbations, and topological quantum error-correcting codes enjoy thresholds to local errors. We connect the two notions of stability by constructing classical statistical mechanics models for decoding general Calderbank-Shor-Steane codes and classical linear codes. Our construction encodes correction success probabilities under uncorrelated bit-flip and phase-flip errors, and simultaneously describes a generalized Z 2 lattice-gauge theory with quenched disorder. We observe that the clean limit of the latter is precisely the imaginary-time path integral of the corresponding quantum code Hamiltonian when the errors are turned into a perturbative X or Z magnetic field. Motivated by error-correction considerations, we define general order parameters for all such generalized Z 2 lattice-gauge theories, and show that they are generally lower bounded by success probabilities of error correction. For CSS codes satisfying the low-density parity-check condition and with a sufficiently large code distance, we prove the existence of a low-temperature ordered phase of the corresponding lattice-gauge theories, particularly for those lacking Euclidean spatial locality and/or when there is a nonzero code rate. We further argue that these results provide evidence for stable phases in the corresponding perturbed quantum Hamiltonians, obtained in the limit of continuous imaginary time. To do so, we distinguish space- and timelike defects in the lattice-gauge theory. A high free-energy cost of spacelike defects corresponds to a successful “memory experiment” and suppresses the energy splitting among the ground states, while a high free-energy cost of timelike defects corresponds to a successful “stability experiment” and points to a nonzero gap to local excitations.

arXiv:2406.15757•PRX Quantum•Feb 10, 2025•11 citations

Stability of Quantum LDPC States under Local Pauli Noise

Tai-Hsuan Yang, Andrew D. Kim, Akash Vijay +1 more

Quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes have a canonical mixed state---the normalized projector onto the code space---that lies at the intersection of quantum error correction and quantum many-body physics, yet the stability of its information-theoretic structure under local noise remains poorly understood. Recent progress on mixed-state phases of matter has identified the spatial decay of conditional mutual information (CMI) $I(A:C|B)$ as a key diagnostic of such stability, analogous to the role of the spectral gap for quantum ground states. We prove that, for the normalized code-projector state of a $\mathbb{Z}_d$ qLDPC stabilizer code under local Pauli noise, the CMI across a buffer $B$ separating $A$ from $C$ decays exponentially with the width of $B$ in two complementary noise regimes independent of system size. At weak noise, this holds for full-system tripartitions, where correlations between the two sides require an error cluster to cross the buffer, an exponentially unlikely event. At strong noise, exponential decay holds whenever the buffer supports no logical operator, since correlations can persist only along rare chains of buffer qudits that remain informative. Under an additional space-uniformity assumption, we establish the robustness of Levin--Wen topological entropy. On finite-dimensional lattices of size $n$, the weak-noise bound further implies a constant-layer quasi-local Petz recovery channel of range $O(\poly(\log n)/\varepsilon)$ that recovers the noiseless state within trace-distance error $\varepsilon$. Both CMI bounds apply to general qLDPC interaction graphs, including geometries where such constant-depth quasi-local recovery need not exist. Thus, the exponential decay of the noise-induced CMI provides a general criterion for mixed-state phase stability.

quant-pharXiv:2610.22357•Oct 16, 2026•0 citations

Near-Optimal Bounds on the Density of Low-Energy States of $k$-Local Hamiltonians and Faster Quantum Algorithms

Sevag Gharibian, François Le Gall, Ranitha Mataraarachchi +1 more

Low-energy estimation and state preparation for general $k$-local Hamiltonians are fundamental challenges in quantum complexity theory. Buhrman et al.~ [BGLGST, PRL 2025] recently broke the natural Grover bound $O^\ast(2^{n/2})$ for both problems, with the improvement depending on the relative accuracy $\varepsilon$ and the locality $k$. In this work, we present faster exponential quantum algorithms for these problems, where the binary entropy function governs the runtime exponent. For sufficiently small $\varepsilon/k$, our algorithms improve the exponent by a factor of $\log(k/\varepsilon)$ over [BGLGST, PRL 2025]. Our main technical result is an entropy-governed lower bound on the dimension of the Hamiltonian's low-energy subspace, obtained by depolarizing its ground state. For fixed $k$, this bound is optimal up to constant factors in the exponent. The same framework yields tighter bounds for Heisenberg, $XY$, and Ising models on arbitrary interaction graphs.

quant-pharXiv:2609.34532•Sep 29, 2026•0 citations
The current theoretical framework for topological phases of matter is based on the thermodynamic limit of a system with geometrically local interactions. A natural question is to what extent the notion of a phase of matter remains well-defined if we relax the constraint of geometric locality, and replace it with a weaker graph-theoretic notion of kkk-locality. As a step towards answering this question, we analyze the stability of the energy gap to perturbations for Hamiltonians corresponding to general quantum low-density parity-check codes, extending work of Bravyi and Hastings [Commun. Math. Phys. 307, 609 (2011)]. A corollary of our main result is that if there exist constants ε1,ε2>0\varepsilon_1,\varepsilon_2>0ε1​,ε2​>0 such that the size Γ(r)Γ(r)Γ(r) of balls of radius rrr on the interaction graph satisfy Γ(r)=O(exp⁡(r1−ε1))Γ(r) = O(\exp(r^{1-\varepsilon_1}))Γ(r)=O(exp(r1−ε1​)) and the local ground states of balls of radius r≤ρ∗=O(log⁡(n)1+ε2)r\leρ^\ast = O(\log(n)^{1+\varepsilon_2})r≤ρ∗=O(log(n)1+ε2​) are locally indistinguishable, then the energy gap of the associated Hamiltonian is stable against local perturbations. This gives an almost exponential improvement over the DDD-dimensional Euclidean case, which requires Γ(r)=O(rD)Γ(r) = O(r^D)Γ(r)=O(rD) and ρ∗=O(nα)ρ^\ast = O(n^α)ρ∗=O(nα) for some α>0α> 0α>0. The approach we follow falls just short of proving stability of finite-rate qLDPC codes, which have ε1=0\varepsilon_1 = 0ε1​=0; we discuss some strategies to extend the result to these cases. We discuss implications for the third law of thermodynamics, as kkk-local Hamiltonians can have extensive zero-temperature entropy.
We generalize the proof of stability of topological order, due to Bravyi, Hastings, and Michalakis, to stabilizer Hamiltonians corresponding to low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes without the restriction of geometric locality in Euclidean space. We consider Hamiltonians H 0 defined by ⟦ N , K , d ⟧ LDPC codes, which obey certain topological quantum order conditions: (i) code distance d ≥ c log  ( N ) , implying local indistinguishability of ground states, and (ii) a mild condition on local and global compatibility of ground states—these include good quantum LDPC codes and the toric code on a hyperbolic lattice, among others. We consider stability under weak perturbations that are quasilocal on the interaction graph defined by H 0 and that can be represented as sums of bounded-norm terms. As long as the local perturbation strength is smaller than a finite constant, we show that the perturbed Hamiltonian has well-defined spectral bands originating from the O ( 1 ) smallest eigenvalues of H 0 . The band originating from the smallest eigenvalue has 2 K states, is separated from the rest of the spectrum by a finite energy gap, and has exponentially narrow bandwidth δ = C N e − Θ ( d ) , which is tighter than the best-known bounds even in the Euclidean case. We also obtain that the new ground-state subspace is related to the initial-code subspace by a quasilocal unitary, allowing one to relate their physical properties. Our proof uses an iterative procedure that performs successive rotations to eliminate non-frustration-free terms in the Hamiltonian. Our results extend to quantum Hamiltonians built from classical LDPC codes, which give rise to stable symmetry-breaking phases. These results show that LDPC codes very generally define stable gapped quantum phases, even in the non-Euclidean setting, initiating a systematic study of such phases of matter.
Phases of matter with robust ground-state degeneracy, such as the quantum toric code, are known to be capable of robust quantum information storage. Here, we address the converse question: given a quantum error-correcting code, when does it define a stable gapped quantum phase of matter, whose ground-state degeneracy is robust against perturbations in the thermodynamic limit? We prove that a low-density parity-check (LDPC) code defines such a phase, robust against all few-body perturbations, if its code distance grows at least logarithmically in the number of degrees of freedom, and it exhibits “check soundness.” Many constant-rate quantum LDPC expander codes have such properties, and define stable phases of matter with a constant zero-temperature entropy density, violating the third law of thermodynamics. Our results also show that quantum toric-code phases are robust to spatially nonlocal few-body perturbations. Similarly, phases of matter defined by classical codes are stable against symmetric perturbations. In the classical setting, we present improved locality bounds on the quasiadiabatic evolution operator between two nearby states in the same code phase.
Abstract We study the stability with respect to a broad class of perturbations of gapped ground-state phases of quantum spin systems defined by frustration-free Hamiltonians. The core result of this work is a proof using the Bravyi–Hastings–Michalakis (BHM) strategy that under a condition of local topological quantum order (LTQO), the bulk gap is stable under perturbations that decay at long distances faster than a stretched exponential. Compared to previous work, we expand the class of frustration-free quantum spin models that can be handled to include models with more general boundary conditions, and models with discrete symmetry breaking. Detailed estimates allow us to formulate sufficient conditions for the validity of positive lower bounds for the gap that are uniform in the system size and that are explicit to some degree. We provide a survey of the BHM strategy following the approach of Michalakis and Zwolak, with alterations introduced to accommodate more general than just periodic boundary conditions and more general lattices. We express the fundamental condition known as LTQO by means of an indistinguishability radius, which we introduce. Using the uniform finite-volume results, we then proceed to study the thermodynamic limit. We first study the case of a unique limiting ground state and then also consider models with spontaneous breaking of a discrete symmetry. In the latter case, LTQO cannot hold for all local observables. However, for perturbations that preserve the symmetry, we show stability of the gap and the structure of the broken symmetry phases. We prove that the GNS Hamiltonian associated with each pure state has a non-zero spectral gap above the ground state.
Topologically ordered phases are stable to local perturbations, and topological quantum error-correcting codes enjoy thresholds to local errors. We connect the two notions of stability by constructing classical statistical mechanics models for decoding general Calderbank-Shor-Steane codes and classical linear codes. Our construction encodes correction success probabilities under uncorrelated bit-flip and phase-flip errors, and simultaneously describes a generalized Z 2 lattice-gauge theory with quenched disorder. We observe that the clean limit of the latter is precisely the imaginary-time path integral of the corresponding quantum code Hamiltonian when the errors are turned into a perturbative X or Z magnetic field. Motivated by error-correction considerations, we define general order parameters for all such generalized Z 2 lattice-gauge theories, and show that they are generally lower bounded by success probabilities of error correction. For CSS codes satisfying the low-density parity-check condition and with a sufficiently large code distance, we prove the existence of a low-temperature ordered phase of the corresponding lattice-gauge theories, particularly for those lacking Euclidean spatial locality and/or when there is a nonzero code rate. We further argue that these results provide evidence for stable phases in the corresponding perturbed quantum Hamiltonians, obtained in the limit of continuous imaginary time. To do so, we distinguish space- and timelike defects in the lattice-gauge theory. A high free-energy cost of spacelike defects corresponds to a successful “memory experiment” and suppresses the energy splitting among the ground states, while a high free-energy cost of timelike defects corresponds to a successful “stability experiment” and points to a nonzero gap to local excitations.
Quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes have a canonical mixed state---the normalized projector onto the code space---that lies at the intersection of quantum error correction and quantum many-body physics, yet the stability of its information-theoretic structure under local noise remains poorly understood. Recent progress on mixed-state phases of matter has identified the spatial decay of conditional mutual information (CMI) I(A:C∣B)I(A:C|B)I(A:C∣B) as a key diagnostic of such stability, analogous to the role of the spectral gap for quantum ground states. We prove that, for the normalized code-projector state of a Zd\mathbb{Z}_dZd​ qLDPC stabilizer code under local Pauli noise, the CMI across a buffer BBB separating AAA from CCC decays exponentially with the width of BBB in two complementary noise regimes independent of system size. At weak noise, this holds for full-system tripartitions, where correlations between the two sides require an error cluster to cross the buffer, an exponentially unlikely event. At strong noise, exponential decay holds whenever the buffer supports no logical operator, since correlations can persist only along rare chains of buffer qudits that remain informative. Under an additional space-uniformity assumption, we establish the robustness of Levin--Wen topological entropy. On finite-dimensional lattices of size nnn, the weak-noise bound further implies a constant-layer quasi-local Petz recovery channel of range $O(\poly(\log n)/\varepsilon)$ that recovers the noiseless state within trace-distance error ε\varepsilonε. Both CMI bounds apply to general qLDPC interaction graphs, including geometries where such constant-depth quasi-local recovery need not exist. Thus, the exponential decay of the noise-induced CMI provides a general criterion for mixed-state phase stability.
Near-Optimal Bounds on the Density of Low-Energy States of kkk-Local Hamiltonians and Faster Quantum Algorithms
Low-energy estimation and state preparation for general kkk-local Hamiltonians are fundamental challenges in quantum complexity theory. Buhrman et al.~ [BGLGST, PRL 2025] recently broke the natural Grover bound O∗(2n/2)O^\ast(2^{n/2})O∗(2n/2) for both problems, with the improvement depending on the relative accuracy ε\varepsilonε and the locality kkk. In this work, we present faster exponential quantum algorithms for these problems, where the binary entropy function governs the runtime exponent. For sufficiently small ε/k\varepsilon/kε/k, our algorithms improve the exponent by a factor of log⁡(k/ε)\log(k/\varepsilon)log(k/ε) over [BGLGST, PRL 2025]. Our main technical result is an entropy-governed lower bound on the dimension of the Hamiltonian's low-energy subspace, obtained by depolarizing its ground state. For fixed kkk, this bound is optimal up to constant factors in the exponent. The same framework yields tighter bounds for Heisenberg, XYXYXY, and Ising models on arbitrary interaction graphs.