A local automaton for the 2D toric code

Details
Speaker Name/Affiliation
Shankar Balasubramaniam / MIT
When
-
Seminar Type
Location (Room)
Duane Physics Room G126
Event Details & Abstracts

Abstract: Can a classical system of interacting particles evolving under local rules have multiple steady states that are stable to weak noise?  This question has a long history, culminating in the work of Gacs, who provides an example in one dimension. Largely inspired by the work of Gacs and preceding work by Tsirelson, I provide a quantum example: a circuit of strictly local quantum operations that maintains the code subspace of the 2D toric code in the presence of noise without needing non-local classical processing.  In 2+1D this circuit is not translation invariant in spacetime, but is time-translation invariant in 3+1D with stacks of toric codes, providing the first example of a local topological quantum memory below 4+1D.  Based on arXiv:2412.19803.