Theoretical and Numerican Studies of Phase Transitions and Error Thresholds in Topological Quantum Memories

Ruben S. Andrist, James R. Wootton, Helmut G. Katzgraber

Ruihua Fan, Yimu Bao, Ehud Altman +1 more

Topological quantum memory can protect information against local errors up to finite error thresholds. Such thresholds are usually determined based on the success of decoding algorithms rather than the intrinsic properties of the mixed states describing corrupted memories. Here we provide an intrinsic characterization of the breakdown of topological quantum memory, which both gives a bound on the performance of decoding algorithms and provides examples of topologically distinct mixed states. We employ three information-theoretical quantities that can be regarded as generalizations of the diagnostics of ground-state topological order, and serve as a definition for topological order in error-corrupted mixed states. We consider the topological contribution to entanglement negativity and two other metrics based on quantum relative entropy and coherent information. In the concrete example of the two-dimensional (2D) Toric code with local bit-flip and phase errors, we map three quantities to observables in 2D classical spin models and analytically show they all undergo a transition at the same error threshold. This threshold is an upper bound on that achieved in any decoding algorithm and is indeed saturated by that in the optimal decoding algorithm for the Toric code. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Benjamin J. Brown, Abbas Al-Shimary, Jiannis K. Pachos

Thomas M. Stace, S. D. Barrett

Many proposals for quantum information processing are subject to detectable loss errors. In this paper, we give a detailed account of recent results in which we showed that topological quantum memories can simultaneously tolerate both loss errors and computational errors, with a graceful tradeoff between the threshold for each. We further discuss a number of subtleties that arise when implementing error correction on topological memories. We particularly focus on the role played by degeneracy in the matching algorithms and present a systematic study of its effects on thresholds. We also discuss some of the implications of degeneracy for estimating phase transition temperatures in the random bond Ising model.

Eric Dennis, Alexei Kitaev, Andrew J. Landahl +1 more

We analyze surface codes, the topological quantum error-correcting codes introduced by Kitaev. In these codes, qubits are arranged in a two-dimensional array on a surface of nontrivial topology, and encoded quantum operations are associated with nontrivial homology cycles of the surface. We formulate protocols for error recovery, and study the efficacy of these protocols. An order-disorder phase transition occurs in this system at a nonzero critical value of the error rate; if the error rate is below the critical value (the accuracy threshold), encoded information can be protected arbitrarily well in the limit of a large code block. This phase transition can be accurately modeled by a three-dimensional Z2 lattice gauge theory with quenched disorder. We estimate the accuracy threshold, assuming that all quantum gates are local, that qubits can be measured rapidly, and that polynomial-size classical computations can be executed instantaneously. We also devise a robust recovery procedure that does not require measurement or fast classical processing; however, for this procedure the quantum gates are local only if the qubits are arranged in four or more spatial dimensions. We discuss procedures for encoding, measurement, and performing fault-tolerant universal quantum computation with surface codes, and argue that these codes provide a promising framework for quantum computing architectures.

Beni Yoshida