Quantum Information

I will present a unified framework for understanding the statistics and anomalies of excitations—ranging from particles to higher-dimensional objects—in quantum lattice systems. We introduce a general method to compute the quantized statistics of Abelian excitations in arbitrary dimensions via Berry phases of locality-preserving symmetry operations, uncovering novel statistics for membrane excitations. These statistics correspond to quantum anomalies of generalized global symmetries and imply obstructions to gauging, enforcing long-range entanglement. In particular, we show that anomalous higher-form symmetries enforce intrinsic long-range entanglement, meaning that fidelity with any SRE states must exhibit exponential decay, unlike ordinary (0-form) symmetry anomalies. As an application, we identify a new example of (3+1)D mixed-state topological order with fermionic loop excitations, characterized by a breakdown of remote detectability linked to higher-form symmetry anomalies.

We present a tensor-network-based classical algorithm (equipped with guarantees) for simulating $n$-qubit quantum circuits with arbitrary single-qubit noise. Our algorithm represents the state of a noisy quantum system by a particular ensemble of matrix product states from which we stochastically sample a pure quantum state. Each single qubit noise process acting on a pure state is then represented by the ensemble of states that achieve the minimal average entanglement (the entanglement of formation) between the noisy qubit and the rest of the system. This approach provides a connection between the entanglement of formation and the accuracy of the simulation algorithm. For a given maximum bond dimension $\chi$ and circuit, our algorithm comes with an upper bound on the simulation error (in total variation distance), runs in $poly(n,\chi)$-time and improves upon related prior work (1) in scope: by extending from the three commonly considered noise models to general single qubit noise (2) in performance: by employing a state-dependent locally-entanglement-optimal unraveling and (3) in conceptual contribution: by showing that the fixed unraveling used in prior work becomes equivalent to our choice of unraveling in the special case of depolarizing and dephasing noise acting on a maximally entangled state. This is joint work with Simon Cichy, Paul K. Faehrmann, Lennart Bittel and Jens Eisert.