Topological entanglement entropy: an information-theoretic viewpoint

Bei Zeng, D. L. Zhou

We study the symmetry-protected topological (SPT) orders for bosonic systems from an information-theoretic viewpoint. We show that with a proper choice of the onsite basis, the degenerate ground-state space of SPT orders (on a manifold with boundary) is a quantum error-correcting code with macroscopic classical distance, hence is stable against any local bit-flip errors. We show that this error-correcting property of the SPT orders has a natural connection to that of the symmetry-breaking orders, whose degenerate ground-state space is a classical error-correcting code with a macroscopic distance, providing a new angle for the hidden symmetry-breaking properties in SPT orders. We further propose new types of topological entanglement entropy that probe the SPT orders hidden in their symmetric ground states, which also signal the topological phase transitions protected by symmetry. Combined with the original definition of topological entanglement entropy that probes the “intrinsic topological orders”, and the recent proposed one that probes the symmetry-breaking orders, the set of different types of topological entanglement entropy may hence distinguish topological orders, SPT orders, and symmetry-breaking orders, which may be mixed up in a single system.

James R. Wootton

Clare I. Abreu, Raúl Herrera, Edward H. Rezayi

Bei Zeng, Duan-Lu Zhou

We discuss the symmetry-protected topological (SPT) orders for bosonic systems from an information-theoretic viewpoint. We show that with a proper choice of the onsite basis, the degenerate ground-state space of SPT orders (on a manifold with boundary) is a quantum error-correcting code with macroscopic classical distance, hence is stable against any local bit-flip errors. We show that this error-correcting property of the SPT orders has a natural connection to that of the symmetry-breaking orders, whose degenerate ground-state space is a classical error-correcting code with a macroscopic distance, providing a new angle for the hidden symmetry-breaking properties in SPT orders. We propose new types of topological entanglement entropy that probe the STP orders hidden in their symmetric ground states, which also signal the topological phase transitions protected by symmetry. Combined with the original definition of topological entanglement entropy that probes the 'intrinsic topological orders', and the recent proposed one that probes the symmetry-breaking orders, the set of different types of topological entanglement entropy may hence distinguish topological orders, SPT orders, and symmetry-breaking orders, which may be mixed up in a single system.

Joydeep Naskar, Sai Satyam Samal

Topological entanglement entropy (TEE) is an efficient way to detect topological order in the ground state of gapped Hamiltonians. The seminal work of Kitaev and Preskill~\cite{preskill-kitaev-tee} and simultaneously by Levin and Wen~\cite{levin-wen-tee} proposed information quantities that can probe the TEE. In the present work, we explain why the subtraction schemes in the proposed information quantities~\cite{levin-wen-tee,preskill-kitaev-tee} work for the computation of TEE and generalize them for arbitrary number of subregions by explicitly noting the necessary conditions for an information quantity to capture TEE. Our conditions differentiate the probes defined by Kitaev-Preskill and Levin-Wen into separate classes. While there are infinitely many possible probes of TEE, we focus particularly on the cyclic quantities $Q_{2n+1}$ and multi-information $I_n$. We also show that the holographic entropy inequalities are satisfied by the quantum entanglement entropy of the non-degenerate ground state of a topologically ordered two-dimensional medium with a mass gap.

Ari Pakman, Andrei Parnachev