Mixed-State Topological Order and the Errorfield Double Formulation of Decoherence-Induced Transitions.

Authors

Yimu Bao, Ruihua Fan, Ashvin Vishwanath, Ehud Altman

Published in

Physical review letters. Volume 136. Issue 22. Pages 220402. Jun 05, 2026.

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.

PMID:
42330447
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 23 Jun 2026.

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