Stability of topologically invariant order parameters at finite temperature

Abstract

Topological entanglement entropy is a topological invariant which can detect topological order of quantum many-body ground state. We assume an existence of such order parameter at finite temperature which is invariant under smooth deformation of the subsystems, and study its stability under hamiltonian perturbation. We apply this assumption to a Gibbs state of hamiltonian which satisfies so called `strong commuting' condition, which we shall define in the paper. Interesting models in this category include local hamiltonian models based on quantum error correcting code. We prove a stability of such topologically invariant order parameter against arbitrary perturbation which can be expressed as a sum of geometrically local bounded-norm terms. The first order correction against such perturbation vanishes in the thermodynamic limit.