Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

Coupled layer construction of three dimensional topological codes with 'Fractons'

Presenting Author: Xie Chen, IQIM, Caltech

Three dimensional quantum codes can exhibit exotic topological properties compared to their two dimensional counterparts. In two dimensions, topological excitations are point like and can move freely in space, inducing nontrivial braiding statistics as they wind around each other. In three dimensions, topological excitations can also be point like. But it has been discovered that sometimes their motion are highly restricted, such that they can only move in a sub-dimensional manifold or their motion are correlated with each other. Such point excitations are dubbed 'fractons' and in this talk we try to address the question of where they come from. We show that one class of 'fractons' can emerge by coupling layers of two dimensional topological codes and inducing a condensation of 'particles loops'. By making connections between the 'fracton' topological order and the more conventional two dimensional ones, we are able to generalize 'fractons' models beyond the stabilizer framework.

(Session 12 : Saturday from 1:30pm - 2:15pm)