Persisting topological order via geometric frustration

Abstract

We introduce a toric code model on the dice lattice which is exactly solvable and displays topological order at zero temperature. In the presence of a magnetic field, the flux dynamics is mapped to the highly frustrated transverse field Ising model on the kagome lattice. This correspondence suggests an intriguing disorder by disorder phenomenon in a topologically ordered system implying that the topological order is extremely robust due to the geometric frustration. Furthermore, a connection between fully frustrated transverse field Ising models and topologically ordered systems is demonstrated which opens an exciting physical playground due to the interplay of topological quantum order and geometric frustration.