Bounded light cone and robust topological order out of equilibrium

The ground-state degeneracy of topologically ordered gapped Hamiltonians is the bedrock for self-correcting quantum memories, which are unfortunately not stable away from equilibrium even at zero temperature. This plague precludes practical robust self-correction since stability at zero temperature is a prerequisite for finite-temperature robustness. In this work, we show that the emergence of a bounded light cone renders the unitary time evolution a quasiadiabatic continuation that preserves topological order, with the initial ground space retaining its macroscopic distance at all times as a quantum code. We also show how bounded light cones can emerge through suitable perturbations in Kitaev's toric code and honeycomb model. Our results suggest that topological orders and self-correcting quantum memories can be dynamically robust at zero temperature.

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Publication Details

Journal
Physical review. A/Physical review, A
Published
2025-02-10
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.111.022414
Citations
2
Primary Topic
Quantum many-body systems
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.49

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article

Bounded light cone and robust topological order out of equilibrium

Jun Cao, Alioscia Hamma, Yu-Ran Zhang, Heng Fan et al.
2 citations
Physical review. A/Physical review, A
Quantum many-body systems
2.49
article

Bounded light cone and robust topological order out of equilibrium

Jun Cao, Alioscia Hamma, Yu-Ran Zhang, Heng Fan, Wu-Ming Liu, Yu Zeng
article en
2 citations

Abstract

The ground-state degeneracy of topologically ordered gapped Hamiltonians is the bedrock for self-correcting quantum memories, which are unfortunately not stable away from equilibrium even at zero temperature. This plague precludes practical robust self-correction since stability at zero temperature is a prerequisite for finite-temperature robustness. In this work, we show that the emergence of a bounded light cone renders the unitary time evolution a quasiadiabatic continuation that preserves topological order, with the initial ground space retaining its macroscopic distance at all times as a quantum code. We also show how bounded light cones can emerge through suitable perturbations in Kitaev's toric code and honeycomb model. Our results suggest that topological orders and self-correcting quantum memories can be dynamically robust at zero temperature.

Physical review. A/Physical review, AVol. 111(2)
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), University of Massachusetts Boston (US), RIKEN (JP), FZU ‒ Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (CZ), Inspur (China) (CN), Innovative Research (United States) (US), Institute of Physics (CN), University of Naples Federico II (IT), South China University of Technology (CN)
National Science Foundation, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, National Key Research and Development Program of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 14%
Quantum many-body systems
2.49
DOISourceOpenAlex
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