Feasibility of self-correcting quantum memory and thermal stability of topological order (Q643656)

The closeness of quantum computing and condensed matter physics has become more and more impressive. This results in that the influence of ideas of quantum computing on condensed matter physics has recently greatly increased. Examples of this are multiple: for example, a many-body entanglement that arises in ground states of correlated spin systems; description of condensed systems in terms of quantum codes, primarily, so called stabilizer codes and its generalizations. All this constitutes the aim of the present review, namely, to fully exploit the power of quantum coding theory in condensed matter physics and shed a light on the following two open problems: (i) feasibility of self-correcting quantum memory and (ii) thermal stability of topological order. In this regard, the authors propose a model of quantum codes which covers a large class of physically realizable quantum codes, called a stabilizer code with translational and scale symmetries, solve the \(D\)-dimensional model exactly by determining its coding properties completely and analyze the feasibility of self-correcting quantum memory for \(D = 1,2,3\), and establish the connection between self-correcting quantum memory and stable topological order at finite temperature and analyze the arising in this model thermal stability of topological order. However, as shown herein, this model does not work as self-correcting quantum memory because of a certain topological constraint imposed on geometric shapes of its logical operators.