On the robustness of topological quantum codes: Ising perturbation

Abstract

We study the phase transition from two different topological phases to the ferromagnetic phase by focusing on points of the phase transition. To this end, we present a detailed mapping from such models to the Ising model in a transverse field. Such a mapping is derived by re-writing the initial Hamiltonian in a new basis so that the final model in such a basis has a well-known approximated phase transition point. Specifically, we consider the toric codes and the color codes on some various lattices with Ising perturbation. Our results provide a useful table to compare the robustness of the topological codes and to explicitly show that the robustness of the topological codes depends on triangulation of their underlying lattices.