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Measurements in quantum topological phases of matter and quantum computing

Gabrielle Tournaire

Published Aug 28, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum measurements often destroy the “quantumness” of a state. Combining measurements and entanglement, however, unlocks new opportunities in quantum computing, as it transcends the boundaries between quantum phases. Measurement-based quantum computation is a perfect example: from an array of locally entangled qubits, individual measurements teleport and modify some logical information. Since quantum operations are prone to errors, this information is encoded in the topological Toric code, thus enabling fault-tolerant computation. Since the Toric code has a 2-dimensional structure, the resource state needed to perform measurement-based quantum computation is necessarily 3-dimensional and is called the 3D cluster state. In this thesis, we provide new tools to enlarge the capabilities of topological measurement-based quantum computation and reduce its operational cost. First, we introduce a lattice defect in the underlying cluster state that improves the expressivity of the computation. Second, we develop general ideas towards circuit compaction and quantify the resources used by the new methods. Furthermore, here, the Toric code is created thanks to local measurements, while it cannot be created with local unitary operations only. We investigate the mathematical roots of this intriguing property, and we show that long-range entanglement arises from locally measuring some general short-range entangled state. Specifically, we assume that the initial short-range entangled state is in a non-trivial symmetry protected topological phase for an abelian group on an infinite spin chain. That is, there is a global operation generated by local unitary operators labeled by the element of the group that leaves the state invariant. On infinite quantum spin chains, these symmetry protected topological phases have been completely characterized. We then perform on-site measurements on increasing intervals of the chain. This creates a sequence of measured states that are eigenstates of the local unitaries associated with elements of a subgroup of the symmetry group. Using the algebraic properties of the initial state, we show that this sequence of measured states has increasing long-range correlations. The entanglement bounds necessarily deteriorate with the size of the measured intervals; thus, the measured states cannot be uniformly short-range entangled.

DOI
10.14288/1.0455532

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Quantum measurements often destroy the “quantumness” of a state. Combining measurements and entanglement, however, unlocks new opportunities in quantum computing, as it transcends the boundaries between quantum phases. Measurement-based quantum computation is a perfect example: from an array of locally entangled qubits, individual measurements teleport and modify some logical information. Since quantum operations are prone to errors, this information is encoded in the topological Toric code, thus enabling fault-tolerant computation. Since the Toric code has a 2-dimensional structure, the resource state needed to perform measurement-based quantum computation is necessarily 3-dimensional and is called the 3D cluster state. In this thesis, we provide new tools to enlarge the capabilities of topological measurement-based quantum computation and reduce its operational cost. First, we introduce a lattice defect in the underlying cluster state that improves the expressivity of the computation. Second, we develop general ideas towards circuit compaction and quantify the resources used by the new methods. Furthermore, here, the Toric code is created thanks to local measurements, while it cannot be created with local unitary operations only. We investigate the mathematical roots of this intriguing property, and we show that long-range entanglement arises from locally measuring some general short-range entangled state. Specifically, we assume that the initial short-range entangled state is in a non-trivial symmetry protected topological phase for an abelian group on an infinite spin chain. That is, there is a global operation generated by local unitary operators labeled by the element of the group that leaves the state invariant. On infinite quantum spin chains, these symmetry protected topological phases have been completely characterized. We then perform on-site measurements on increasing intervals of the chain. This creates a sequence of measured states that are eigenstates of the local unitaries associated with elements of a subgroup of the symmetry group. Using the algebraic properties of the initial state, we show that this sequence of measured states has increasing long-range correlations. The entanglement bounds necessarily deteriorate with the size of the measured intervals; thus, the measured states cannot be uniformly short-range entangled.
We present the first examples of topological phases of matter with uniform power for measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC). This is possible due to a new framework for analyzing the computational properties of phases of matter that is more general than previous constructions, which have been limited to short-range entangled phases in one dimension. We show that ground states of the toric code in an anisotropic magnetic field yield a natural, albeit noncomputationally universal, application of our framework. We then present a new model with topological order the ground states of which are universal resources for MBQC. Both topological models are enriched by subsystem symmetries and these symmetries protect their computational power. Our framework greatly expands the range of physical models that can be analyzed from the computational perspective.
A fundamental distinction between many-body quantum states are those with short- and long-range entanglement (SRE and LRE). The latter cannot be created by finite-depth circuits, underscoring the nonlocal nature of Schrödinger cat states, topological order, and quantum criticality. Remarkably, examples are known where LRE is obtained by performing single-site measurements on SRE, such as the toric code from measuring a sublattice of a 2D cluster state. However, a systematic understanding of when and how measurements of SRE give rise to LRE is still lacking. Here, we establish that LRE appears upon performing measurements on symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases—of which the cluster state is one example. For instance, we show how to implement the Kramers-Wannier transformation by adding a cluster SPT to an input state followed by measurement. This transformation naturally relates states with SRE and LRE. An application is the realization of double-semion order when the input state is the Z 2 Levin-Gu SPT. Similarly, the addition of fermionic SPTs and measurement leads to an implementation of the Jordan-Wigner transformation of a general state. More generally, we argue that a large class of SPT phases protected by G × H symmetry gives rise to anomalous LRE upon measuring G -charges, and we prove that this persists for generic points in the SPT phase under certain conditions. Our work introduces a new practical tool for using SPT phases as resources for creating LRE, and we uncover the classification result that all states related by sequentially gauging Abelian groups or by Jordan-Wigner transformation are in the same equivalence class, once we augment finite-depth circuits with single-site measurements. In particular, any topological or fracton order with a solvable finite gauge group can be obtained from a product state in this way. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We consider the transition between short-range entangled (SRE) and long-range entangled states of infinite quantum spin chains which is induced by local measurements. Specifically, we assume that the initial state is in a non-trivial symmetry-protected topological phase of a compact local symmetry group G\mathcal{G}G. We show that the on-site measurements of an appropriate local charge on intervals of increasing lengths transform the initial SRE state into a family of states with increasingly long-range correlations. In particular, the post-measurement states cannot be uniformly short-range entangled. In the case where the initial state is obtained from a product state using a quantum cellular automaton, we construct the infinite-volume post-measurement state and exhibit almost local observables that are maximally correlated.
In recent years, topological phases of matter have presented exciting new avenues to achieve scalable quantum computation. In this thesis, we investigate a class of quantum many-body spin models known as symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases for use in quantum information processing and storage. We explore the fault-tolerant properties of SPT phases, and how they can be utilized in the design of a quantum computer. Of central importance in this thesis is the concept of quantum error-correction, which in addition to its importance in fault-tolerant quantum computation, is used to characterise the stability of topological phases at finite temperature. We begin with an introduction to quantum computation, quantum error correction, and topological phases of matter. We then focus on the fundamental question of whether symmetry-protected topological phases of matter can exist in thermal equilibrium; we prove that systems protected by global onsite symmetries cannot be ordered at nonzero temperature. Subsequently, we show that certain three-dimensional models with generalised higher-form symmetries can be thermally SPT ordered, and we relate this order to the ability to perform fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computation. Following this, we assess feasibility of these phases as quantum memories, motivated by the fact that SPT phases in three dimensions can possess protected topological degrees of freedom on their boundary. We find that certain SPT ordered systems can be self-correcting, allowing quantum information to be stored for arbitrarily long times without requiring active error correction. Finally, we develop a framework to construct new schemes of fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computation. As a notable example, we develop a cluster-state scheme that simulates the braiding and fusion of surface-code defects, offering novel alternative methods to achieve fault-tolerant universal quantum computation.
We consider ground states of quantum spin chains with symmetry-protected topological (SPT) order and their usefulness as resources for measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC). It is known that SPT phases (applicable to infinite spin chains) protected by a finite abelian symmetry group exhibit uniform computational power. In this work, we extend these ideas to finite spin chains which are more realistic resources for physical computation. Herein, we relate the usefulness of MBQC resource states to a non-vanishing string-order parameter. Furthermore, using the techniques developed, we show that hard-to-think-about regimes of computation are actually more efficient than the textbook prescription. Our results strengthen the connection between condensed matter and quantum computation and also provide the necessary tools to explore such connections in the state-of-the-art noisy small quantum devices. As an outlook, we discuss how this newly developed formalism can potentially be used to identify non-traditional resource states for MBQC and be extended to higher dimensions, leading to universal quantum computation.
While quantum computers can achieve dramatic speedups over the classical computers familiar to us, identifying the origin of this quantum advantage in physical systems remains a major goal of quantum information science. A useful tool here is measurement-based quantum computation (MQC), a computational framework utilizing the quantum entanglement found in many-body resource states. Not all resource states are useful for quantum computation however, so an important question is what properties of many-body entanglement characterize universal resource states, which can implement any quantum computation. Many-body states are also studied in condensed matter physics, where the collective behavior of quantum many-body systems sometimes define topological phases of matter. These phases are defined by nonlocal many-body entanglement, making topologically-ordered states natural candidates for MQC. We might wonder if these topological phases could be organized as phases of quantum computation, so that every state within the phase is universal for MQC. While phases of symmetry-protected topological order (SPTO) have arisen as natural candidates, previous attempts to demonstrate an MQC-SPTO correspondence were mostly limited to nonuniversal 1D spin chains, leaving the important 2D setting wide open. In this dissertation, we explore the wide and varied connections between MQC and SPTO, and obtain new results for 1D and 2D systems. After identifying a new MQC-SPTO correspondence within 1D spin chains, we move up and explore the operational use of 2D states with two complementary forms of SPTO. We create a new Union Jack resource state, whose different form of SPTO than previous 2D resource states permits a hierarchical notion of MQC universality. This state leads us to consider an idealized model of 2D SPTO, where we show that an additional symmetry condition makes these model states form universal resources for MQC only when they have nontrivial SPTO. We finally study the intrinsic complexity of SPTO-inspired states for classically intractable sampling, and identify inherent advantages of MQC for this purpose. Our work highlights the rich complexity available in states of entangled quantum matter, providing new evidence which sharpens our understanding of the diverse connections between MQC and SPTO.