@article {3144, title = {Codimension-2 defects and higher symmetries in (3+1)D topological phases}, year = {2022}, month = {8/15/2022}, abstract = {

(3+1)D topological phases of matter can host a broad class of non-trivial topological defects of codimension-1, 2, and 3, of which the well-known point charges and flux loops are special cases. The complete algebraic structure of these defects defines a higher category, and can be viewed as an emergent higher symmetry. This plays a crucial role both in the classification of phases of matter and the possible fault-tolerant logical operations in topological quantum error correcting codes. In this paper, we study several examples of such higher codimension defects from distinct perspectives. We mainly study a class of invertible codimension-2 topological defects, which we refer to as twist strings. We provide a number of general constructions for twist strings, in terms of gauging lower dimensional invertible phases, layer constructions, and condensation defects. We study some special examples in the context of Z2 gauge theory with fermionic charges, in Z2\×Z2 gauge theory with bosonic charges, and also in non-Abelian discrete gauge theories based on dihedral (Dn) and alternating (A6) groups. The intersection between twist strings and Abelian flux loops sources Abelian point charges, which defines an H4 cohomology class that characterizes part of an underlying 3-group symmetry of the topological order. The equations involving background gauge fields for the 3-group symmetry have been explicitly written down for various cases. We also study examples of twist strings interacting with non-Abelian flux loops (defining part of a non-invertible higher symmetry), examples of non-invertible codimension-2 defects, and examples of interplay of codimension-2 defects with codimension-1 defects. We also find an example of geometric, not fully topological, twist strings in (3+1)D A6 gauge theory.

}, keywords = {FOS: Mathematics, FOS: Physical sciences, High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th), Mathematical Physics (math-ph), Quantum Algebra (math.QA), Quantum Physics (quant-ph), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)}, doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2208.07367}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.07367}, author = {Barkeshli, Maissam and Chen, Yu-An and Huang, Sheng-Jie and Kobayashi, Ryohei and Tantivasadakarn, Nathanan and Zhu, Guanyu} } @article {3127, title = {Disordered Lieb-Robinson bounds in one dimension}, year = {2022}, month = {8/10/2022}, abstract = {

By tightening the conventional Lieb-Robinson bounds to better handle systems which lack translation invariance, we determine the extent to which \"weak links\" suppress operator growth in disordered one-dimensional spin chains. In particular, we prove that ballistic growth is impossible when the distribution of coupling strengths μ(J) has a sufficiently heavy tail at small J, and identify the correct dynamical exponent to use instead. Furthermore, through a detailed analysis of the special case in which the couplings are genuinely random and independent, we find that the standard formulation of Lieb-Robinson bounds is insufficient to capture the complexity of the dynamics -- we must distinguish between bounds which hold for all sites of the chain and bounds which hold for a subsequence of sites, and we show by explicit example that these two can have dramatically different behaviors. All the same, our result for the dynamical exponent is tight, in that we prove by counterexample that there cannot exist any Lieb-Robinson bound with a smaller exponent. We close by discussing the implications of our results, both major and minor, for numerous applications ranging from quench dynamics to the structure of ground states.

}, keywords = {Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn), FOS: Physical sciences, Mathematical Physics (math-ph), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)}, doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2208.05509}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.05509}, author = {Baldwin, Christopher L. and Ehrenberg, Adam and Guo, Andrew Y. and Alexey V. Gorshkov} } @article {3153, title = {Error-correcting codes for fermionic quantum simulation}, year = {2022}, month = {10/16/2022}, abstract = {

We provide ways to simulate fermions by qubits on 2d lattices using Z2 gauge theories (stabilizer codes). By studying the symplectic automorphisms of the Pauli module over the Laurent polynomial ring, we develop a systematic way to increase the code distances of stabilizer codes. We identify a family of stabilizer codes that can be used to simulate fermions with code distances of d=2,3,4,5,6,7 such that any \⌊d\−12\⌋-qubit error can be corrected. In particular, we demonstrate three stabilizer codes with code distances of d=3, d=4, and d=5, respectively, with all stabilizers and logical operators shown explicitly. The syndromes for all Pauli errors are provided. Finally, we introduce a syndrome-matching method to compute code distances numerically.

}, keywords = {FOS: Mathematics, FOS: Physical sciences, Mathematical Physics (math-ph), Quantum Algebra (math.QA), Quantum Physics (quant-ph), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)}, doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2210.08411}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.08411}, author = {Chen, Yu-An and Alexey V. Gorshkov and Xu, Yijia} } @article {3012, title = {Three-dimensional quantum cellular automata from chiral semion surface topological order and beyond}, year = {2022}, month = {2/10/2022}, abstract = {

We construct a novel three-dimensional quantum cellular automaton (QCA) based on a system with short-range entangled bulk and chiral semion boundary topological order. We argue that either the QCA is nontrivial, i.e. not a finite-depth circuit of local quantum gates, or there exists a two-dimensional commuting projector Hamiltonian realizing the chiral semion topological order (characterized by U(1)2 Chern-Simons theory). Our QCA is obtained by first constructing the Walker-Wang Hamiltonian of a certain premodular tensor category of order four, then condensing the deconfined bulk boson at the level of lattice operators. We show that the resulting Hamiltonian hosts chiral semion surface topological order in the presence of a boundary and can be realized as a non-Pauli stabilizer code on qubits, from which the QCA is defined. The construction is then generalized to a class of QCAs defined by non-Pauli stabilizer codes on 2n-dimensional qudits that feature surface anyons described by U(1)2n Chern-Simons theory. Our results support the conjecture that the group of nontrivial three-dimensional QCAs is isomorphic to the Witt group of non-degenerate braided fusion categories.

}, keywords = {FOS: Physical sciences, Mathematical Physics (math-ph), Quantum Physics (quant-ph), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)}, doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2202.05442}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.05442}, author = {Shirley, Wilbur and Chen, Yu-An and Dua, Arpit and Ellison, Tyler D. and Tantivasadakarn, Nathanan and Williamson, Dominic J.} } @article {3030, title = {Universal scattering with general dispersion relations}, journal = {Phys. Rev. Research}, volume = {4}, year = {2022}, month = {4/6/2022}, chapter = {023014}, abstract = {

Many synthetic quantum systems allow particles to have dispersion relations that are neither linear nor quadratic functions. Here, we explore single-particle scattering in general spatial dimension D\≥1 when the density of states diverges at a specific energy. To illustrate the underlying principles in an experimentally relevant setting, we focus on waveguide quantum electrodynamics (QED) problems (i.e. D=1) with dispersion relation ϵ(k)=\±|d|km, where m\≥2 is an integer. For a large class of these problems for any positive integer m, we rigorously prove that when there are no bright zero-energy eigenstates, the S-matrix evaluated at an energy E\→0 converges to a universal limit that is only dependent on m. We also give a generalization of a key index theorem in quantum scattering theory known as Levinson\&$\#$39;s theorem -- which relates the scattering phases to the number of bound states -- to waveguide QED scattering for these more general dispersion relations. We then extend these results to general integer dimensions D\≥1, dispersion relations ϵ(k)=|k|a for a D-dimensional momentum vector k with any real positive a, and separable potential scattering.

}, keywords = {FOS: Physical sciences, Mathematical Physics (math-ph), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.023014}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.09830}, author = {Wang, Yidan and Michael Gullans and Na, Xuesen and Whitsitt, Seth and Alexey V. Gorshkov} }