Discovering and classifying non-trivial mixed states and mixed state phase transitions are some of the most important current issues in condensed matter and quantum information. In this study, we investigate some non-trivial mixed states and phase transitions between them by using the second Rényi conditional mutual information (CMI). The CMI can measure mixed state gap'', estimated by the exponential decay rate of the second Rényi CMI under a tripartition of system, which provides the second Rényi version of the Markov length. We introduce an efficient numerical scheme for the calculation of the second Rényi CMI based on the doubled Hilbert space formalism, and study the classification of non-trivial mixed states and the emergence of mixed state phase transitions for (i) the cluster model under odd-site local $Z$ decoherence and (ii) transverse field Ising model under both $ZZ$ and $X$ decoherence. The second Rényi CMI is a powerful measure to study non-trivial mixed gapped" quantum matters and mixed phase transitions. In addition to this, the present study shows that the second Rényi CMI exhibits specific behavior for the transition to strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking mixed phase.
For quantum phases of Hamiltonian ground states, the energy gap plays a central role in ensuring the stability of the phase as long as the gap remains finite. We propose Markov length, the length scale at which the quantum conditional mutual information (CMI) decays exponentially, as an equally essential quantity characterizing mixed-state phases and transitions. For a state evolving under a local Lindbladian, we argue that if its Markov length remains finite along the evolution, then it remains in the same phase, meaning there exists another quasilocal Lindbladian evolution that can reverse the former one. We apply this diagnostic to toric code subject to decoherence and show that the Markov length is finite everywhere except at its decodability transition, at which it diverges. CMI in this case can be mapped to the free energy cost of point defects in the random bond Ising model. This implies that the mixed-state phase transition coincides with the decodability transition and also suggests a quasilocal decoding channel.
The Markov length, the length scale governing the exponential decay of conditional mutual information (CMI) in a quantum many-body state, has proven useful for characterizing mixed-state phases of matter. Nevertheless, we show that a state's Markov length is not generally stable under weak local channels. The failure of stability occurs already at a pure product state. We demonstrate this explicitly in a one-dimensional fermionic chain, where a fine-tuned depth-two circuit of nearest-neighbor Gaussian channels maps the vacuum to a state whose CMI decays \emph{algebraically} and whose Markov length is therefore infinite, even when the channels are taken arbitrarily close to the identity. The algebraic decay is rooted in the nonanalyticity of the von Neumann entropy at rank-deficient density operators. We exhibit an analogous instability on an ordinary qubit chain. More generally, we show that the Markov length is unstable in any translation-invariant state with even a single rank-deficient reduced density operator. These results pose a challenge to recent definitions of mixed-state phase equivalence based on the Markov length.
Discovering and categorizing quantum orders in mixed many-body systems are currently one of the most important problems. Specific types of decoherence applied to typical quantum many-body states can induce a novel kind of mixed state accompanying characteristic symmetry orders, which has no counterparts in pure many-body states. We study phenomena generated by the interplay between two types of decoherence applied to the one-dimensional transverse field Ising model (TFIM). We show that in the doubled Hilbert space formalism, the decoherence can be described by a filtering operation applied to matrix product states (MPS) defined in the doubled Hilbert system. The filtering operation induces specific deformation of the MPS, which approximates the ground state of a certain parent Hamiltonian in the doubled Hilbert space. In the present case, such a parent Hamiltonian is the quantum Ashkin-Teller model, having a rich phase diagram with critical lines and quantum phase transitions. By investigating the deformed MPS, we find various types of mixed states emergent from the ground states of the TFIM and clarify phase transitions between them. In that study, strong and weak
Z2 symmetries play an important role, for which we introduce efficient order parameters, such as R\'enyi-2 correlators, entanglement entropy, etc., in the doubled Hilbert space.
Quantum critical phases are extended regions of phase space characterized by a diverging correlation length. By analogy, we define an \emph{information critical phase} as an extended region of a mixed state phase diagram where the Markov length, the characteristic length scale governing the decay of the conditional mutual information (CMI), diverges.
We demonstrate that such a phase arises in decohered
ZN toric codes by assessing both the CMI and the coherent information, the latter quantifying the robustness of the encoded logical qudits. For
N>4, we find that the system hosts an information critical phase intervening between the decodable and non-decodable phases where the coherent information saturates to a fractional value in the thermodynamic limit, indicating that a finite fraction of logical information is still preserved. We show that the density matrix in this phase can be decomposed into a convex sum of Coulombic pure states, where gapped anyons reorganize into gapless photons. We further consider the ungauged
ZN toric code and interpret its mixed state phase diagram in the language of strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking. We argue that in the dual model, the information critical phase arises because the spontaneously broken off-diagonal
ZN symmetry gets enhanced to a
U(1) symmetry, resulting in a novel superfluid phase whose gapless modes involve coherent excitations of both the system and the environment. Finally, we propose an optimal decoding protocol for the corrupted
ZN toric code and show that its logical error rate saturates to a fractional value in the information critical phase. Our findings identify a gapless analog for mixed-state phases that still acts as a fractional topological quantum memory, thereby extending the conventional paradigm of quantum memory phases.
Understanding coupled electron-phonon systems is one of the fundamental issues in strongly correlated systems. In this paper, we aim to extend the notion of mixed-state phases to the realm of coupled electron/spin-phonon systems. Specifically, we consider a two-dimensional cluster Hamiltonian locally coupled to a set of single bosonic modes with arbitrary coupling strength. First, we adopt a pure-state framework and examine whether a ground-state phase transition out of the symmetry-protected topological phase can be captured using the standard polaron unitary transformation. This approach involves restricting the analysis to the low-energy manifold of the phonon degrees of freedom. We find that the pure-state approach fails to detect the anticipated transition to a topologically trivial phase at strong spin-phonon coupling. Next, we turn to a mixed-state picture. Here, we analyze mixed states of the model obtained by tracing out the phonon degrees of freedom. We employ two distinct diagnostics for mixed-state phase transitions: (i) the von Neumann conditional mutual information (CMI) and (ii) the R\'enyi-2 CMI. We argue that both measures detect signatures of mixed-state phase transitions, albeit at different critical spin-phonon coupling strengths, each corresponding to a subtly distinct notion of the mixed-state phases.
A departure of a mixed quantum state from a local Gibbs description is generally invisible to local observables but can be detected by the conditional mutual information (CMI). Here we study the relationship between the renormalization group (RG) and CMI, and in particular, how RG constrains CMI. We first show that the CMI between nonadjacent regions
A and
C, conditioned on the buffer region
B, is UV-finite whenever the state admits a locally reversible RG with a fixed on-site Hilbert space dimension. We then study two hierarchical models that have long-range CMI and yet admit a simple RG description. The first model has a divergent Markov length at every temperature
0<T<∞ but nevertheless flows to an infinite-temperature product state under RG. The second model satisfies the local Markov condition while violating the global one and is stable against weak noise. At the critical noise strength, the two-point CMI decays only polynomially as a function of the system size, while the two-point mutual information vanishes.