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Updated: Jun 24, 2026

Generation and Coherent Control of Pulsed Quantum Frequency Combs
Published on: June 8, 2018
Mixed-State Topological Order and the Errorfield Double Formulation of Decoherence-Induced Transitions
Yimu Bao1, Ruihua Fan2, Ashvin Vishwanath2
1University of California, Department of Physics, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Abstract:
We develop an effective field theory characterizing the impact of decoherence on states with Abelian topological order and on their capacity to protect quantum information. The decoherence appears as a temporal defect in the double topological quantum field theory that describes the pure density matrix of the uncorrupted state, and it drives a boundary phase transition involving anyon condensation at a critical coupling strength. The ensuing decoherence-induced phases and the loss of quantum information are classified by the Lagrangian subgroups of the double topological order. Our framework generalizes the error recovery transitions, previously derived for certain stabilizer codes, to generic topologically ordered states and shows that they stem from phase transitions in the intrinsic topological order characterizing the mixed state.
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