Spin stiffness and resilience phase transition in a noisy toric-rotor code

Abstract

We use a quantum formalism for the partition function of the classical $XY$ model to identify a resilience phase transition in a noisy toric-rotor code. Specifically, we consider the toric-rotor code under phase-shift noise described by a von Mises probability distribution and show that the fidelity between the final state after noise and the initial state is proportional to the partition function of the $XY$ model. We map the temperature of the $XY$ model to the width of the noise in the toric-rotor code, such that a Kosterlitz--Thouless phase transition at a critical temperature $T_{c}$ corresponds to a mixed-state phase transition at a critical width $\sigma_c$. To characterize this phase transition, we develop a quantum formalism for the spin stiffness in the $XY$ model and show that it is mapped to the gate fidelity in the logical subspace of the toric-rotor code. In particular, we introduce a topological order parameter that characterizes the resilience of the toric-rotor code to decoherence within the logical subspace. We show that the logical subspace does not exhibit complete resilience to noise, which is a necessary condition for correctability. However, it exhibits partial resilience to noise for widths less than $\sigma_c\approx 0.89$, where the resilience order parameter takes values near $1$ and then drops to zero at $\sigma_c$. We also use our results to shed light on the correctability of toric-rotor codes in higher dimensions $d > 2$. Our work shows that the quantum formalism for partition functions provides a mathematically rigorous framework for studying correctability in continuous-variable quantum codes.