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Abstract Topologically ordered phases of matter elude Landau’s symmetry-breaking theory, featuring a variety of intriguing properties such as long-range entanglement and intrinsic robustness against local perturbations. Their extension to periodically driven systems gives rise to exotic new phenomena that are forbidden in thermal equilibrium. Here, we report the observation of signatures of such a phenomenon—a prethermal topologically ordered time crystal—with programmable superconducting qubits arranged on a square lattice. By periodically driving the superconducting qubits with a surface code Hamiltonian, we observe discrete time-translation symmetry breaking dynamics that is only manifested in the subharmonic temporal response of nonlocal logical operators. We further connect the observed dynamics to the underlying topological order by measuring a nonzero topological entanglement entropy and studying its subsequent dynamics. Our results demonstrate the potential to explore exotic topologically ordered nonequilibrium phases of matter with noisy intermediate-scale quantum processors.
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Ground state degeneracy on torus in a family of ZN toric code
Topologically ordered phases in 2 + 1 dimensions are generally characterized by three mutually related features: fractionalized (anyonic) excitations, topological entanglement entropy, and robust ground state degeneracy that does not require symmetry protection or spontaneous symmetry breaking. Such a degeneracy is known as topological degeneracy and can be usually seen under the periodic boundary condition regardless of the choice of the system sizes L1 and L2 in each direction. In this work, we introduce a family of extensions of the Kitaev toric code to N level spins (N ≥ 2). The model realizes topologically ordered phases or symmetry-protected topological phases depending on the parameters in the model. The most remarkable feature of topologically ordered phases is that the ground state may be unique, depending on L1 and L2, despite that the translation symmetry of the model remains unbroken. Nonetheless, the topological entanglement entropy takes the nontrivial value. We argue that this behavior originates from the nontrivial action of translations permuting anyon species.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1846109
- PAR ID:
- 10588202
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Institute of Physics
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Mathematical Physics
- Volume:
- 64
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 0022-2488
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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