Approximating local observables on projected entangled pair states

Tensor network states are for good reasons believed to capture ground states of gapped local Hamiltonians arising in the condensed matter context, states which are in turn expected to satisfy an entanglement area law. However, the computational hardness of contracting projected entangled pair states in two and higher dimensional systems is often seen as a significant obstacle when devising higher-dimensional variants of the density-matrix renormalisation group method. In this work, we show that for those projected entangled pair states that are expected to provide good approximations of such ground states of local Hamiltonians, one can compute local expectation values in quasi-polynomial time. We therefore provide a complexity-theoretic justification of why state-of-the-art numerical tools work so well in practice. We comment on how the transfer operators of such projected entangled pair states have a gap and discuss notions of local topological quantum order. We finally turn to the computation of local expectation values on quantum computers, providing a meaningful application for a small-scale quantum computer.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, minor changes in v

A Non-Commuting Stabilizer Formalism

We propose a non-commutative extension of the Pauli stabilizer formalism. The aim is to describe a class of many-body quantum states which is richer than the standard Pauli stabilizer states. In our framework, stabilizer operators are tensor products of single-qubit operators drawn from the group $\langle \alpha I, X,S\rangle$, where $\alpha=e^{i\pi/4}$ and $S=\operatorname{diag}(1,i)$. We provide techniques to efficiently compute various properties related to bipartite entanglement, expectation values of local observables, preparation by means of quantum circuits, parent Hamiltonians etc. We also highlight significant differences compared to the Pauli stabilizer formalism. In particular, we give examples of states in our formalism which cannot arise in the Pauli stabilizer formalism, such as topological models that support non-Abelian anyons.Comment: 52 page

Double Semion Phase in an Exactly Solvable Quantum Dimer Model on the Kagome Lattice

Quantum dimer models typically arise in various low energy theories like those of frustrated antiferromagnets. We introduce a quantum dimer model on the kagome lattice which stabilizes an alternative $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological order, namely the so-called "double semion" order. For a particular set of parameters, the model is exactly solvable, allowing us to access the ground state as well as the excited states. We show that the double semion phase is stable over a wide range of parameters using numerical exact diagonalization. Furthermore, we propose a simple microscopic spin Hamiltonian for which the low-energy physics is described by the derived quantum dimer model.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Explicit tensor network representation for the ground states of string-net models

The structure of string-net lattice models, relevant as examples of topological phases, leads to a remarkably simple way of expressing their ground states as a tensor network constructed from the basic data of the underlying tensor categories. The construction highlights the importance of the fat lattice to understand these models.Comment: 5 pages, pdf figure

From entanglement renormalisation to the disentanglement of quantum double models

We describe how the entanglement renormalisation approach to topological lattice systems leads to a general procedure for treating the whole spectrum of these models, in which the Hamiltonian is gradually simplified along a parallel simplification of the connectivity of the lattice. We consider the case of Kitaev's quantum double models, both Abelian and non-Abelian, and we obtain a rederivation of the known map of the toric code to two Ising chains; we pay particular attention to the non-Abelian models and discuss their space of states on the torus. Ultimately, the construction is universal for such models and its essential feature, the lattice simplification, may point towards a renormalisation of the metric in continuum theories.Comment: 46 pages, 25 eps figure

A hierarchy of topological tensor network states

We present a hierarchy of quantum many-body states among which many examples of topological order can be identified by construction. We define these states in terms of a general, basis-independent framework of tensor networks based on the algebraic setting of finite-dimensional Hopf C*-algebras. At the top of the hierarchy we identify ground states of new topological lattice models extending Kitaev's quantum double models [26]. For these states we exhibit the mechanism responsible for their non-zero topological entanglement entropy by constructing a renormalization group flow. Furthermore it is shown that those states of the hierarchy associated with Kitaev's original quantum double models are related to each other by the condensation of topological charges. We conjecture that charge condensation is the physical mechanism underlying the hierarchy in general.Comment: 61 page

Mapping Kitaev's quantum double lattice models to Levin and Wen's string-net models

We exhibit a mapping identifying Kitaev's quantum double lattice models explicitly as a subclass of Levin and Wen's string net models via a completion of the local Hilbert spaces with auxiliary degrees of freedom. This identification allows to carry over to these string net models the representation-theoretic classification of the excitations in quantum double models, as well as define them in arbitrary lattices, and provides an illustration of the abstract notion of Morita equivalence. The possibility of generalising the map to broader classes of string nets is considered.Comment: 8 pages, 6 eps figures; v2: matches published versio