English

Self correction requires Energy Barrier for Abelian quantum doubles

Quantum Physics 2016-06-08 v1 Other Condensed Matter Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We rigorously establish an Arrhenius law for the mixing time of quantum doubles based on any Abelian group Zd\mathbb{Z}_d. We have made the concept of the energy barrier therein mathematically well-defined, it is related to the minimum energy cost the environment has to provide to the system in order to produce a generalized Pauli error, maximized for any generalized Pauli errors, not only logical operators. We evaluate this generalized energy barrier in Abelian quantum double models and find it to be a constant independent of system size. Thus, we rule out the possibility of entropic protection for this broad group of models.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1601.01324,
  title  = {Self correction requires Energy Barrier for Abelian quantum doubles},
  author = {Anna Komar and Olivier Landon-Cardinal and Kristan Temme},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1601.01324},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

18 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:24:18.829Z