Abstract
Understanding the behavior of topologically ordered lattice systems at finite temperature is a way of assessing their potential as fault-tolerant quantum memories. We compute the natural extension of the topological entanglement entropy for , namely, the subleading correction to the area law for mutual information. Its dependence on can be written, for Abelian Kitaev models, in terms of information-theoretical functions and readily identifiable scaling behavior, from which the interplay between volume, temperature, and topological order, can be read. These arguments are extended to non-Abelian quantum double models, and numerical results are given for the model, showing qualitative agreement with the Abelian case.
- Received 20 November 2008
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.79.134303
©2009 American Physical Society