Information Critical Phases under Decoherence

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Vijay, Akash, Lee, Jong Yeon
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866917170664964096
author Vijay, Akash
Lee, Jong Yeon
author_facet Vijay, Akash
Lee, Jong Yeon
contents Quantum critical phases are extended regions of phase space characterized by a diverging correlation length. By analogy, we define an information critical phase as an extended region of a mixed state phase diagram where the Markov length, the characteristic length scale governing the decay of the conditional mutual information (CMI), diverges. We demonstrate that such a phase arises in decohered $\mathbb{Z}_{N}$ Toric codes by assessing both the CMI and the coherent information, the latter quantifying the robustness of the encoded logical qudits. For $N>4$, we find that the system hosts an information critical phase intervening between the decodable and non-decodable phases where the coherent information saturates to a fractional value in the thermodynamic limit, indicating that a finite fraction of logical information is still preserved. We show that the density matrix in this phase can be decomposed into a convex sum of Coulombic pure states, where gapped anyons reorganize into gapless photons. We further consider the ungauged $\mathbb{Z}_{N}$ Toric code and interpret its mixed state phase diagram in the language of strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking. We argue that in the dual model, the information critical phase arises because the spontaneously broken off-diagonal $\mathbb{Z}_{N}$ symmetry gets enhanced to a U(1) symmetry, resulting in a novel superfluid phase whose gapless modes involve coherent excitations of both the system and the environment. Finally, we propose an optimal decoding protocol for the corrupted $\mathbb{Z}_{N}$ Toric code and evaluate its effectiveness in recovering the fractional logical information preserved in the information critical phase. Our findings identify a gapless analog for mixed-state phases that still acts as a fractional topological quantum memory, thereby extending the conventional paradigm of quantum memory phases.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_22121
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Information Critical Phases under Decoherence
Vijay, Akash
Lee, Jong Yeon
Quantum Physics
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Statistical Mechanics
Quantum critical phases are extended regions of phase space characterized by a diverging correlation length. By analogy, we define an information critical phase as an extended region of a mixed state phase diagram where the Markov length, the characteristic length scale governing the decay of the conditional mutual information (CMI), diverges. We demonstrate that such a phase arises in decohered $\mathbb{Z}_{N}$ Toric codes by assessing both the CMI and the coherent information, the latter quantifying the robustness of the encoded logical qudits. For $N>4$, we find that the system hosts an information critical phase intervening between the decodable and non-decodable phases where the coherent information saturates to a fractional value in the thermodynamic limit, indicating that a finite fraction of logical information is still preserved. We show that the density matrix in this phase can be decomposed into a convex sum of Coulombic pure states, where gapped anyons reorganize into gapless photons. We further consider the ungauged $\mathbb{Z}_{N}$ Toric code and interpret its mixed state phase diagram in the language of strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking. We argue that in the dual model, the information critical phase arises because the spontaneously broken off-diagonal $\mathbb{Z}_{N}$ symmetry gets enhanced to a U(1) symmetry, resulting in a novel superfluid phase whose gapless modes involve coherent excitations of both the system and the environment. Finally, we propose an optimal decoding protocol for the corrupted $\mathbb{Z}_{N}$ Toric code and evaluate its effectiveness in recovering the fractional logical information preserved in the information critical phase. Our findings identify a gapless analog for mixed-state phases that still acts as a fractional topological quantum memory, thereby extending the conventional paradigm of quantum memory phases.
title Information Critical Phases under Decoherence
topic Quantum Physics
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.22121