Physics – Condensed Matter – Strongly Correlated Electrons
Scientific paper
2011-08-09
Physics
Condensed Matter
Strongly Correlated Electrons
(18 pages, 4 figures, v2: typos and updated figure); Philosophical Magazine (2011)
Scientific paper
10.1080/14786435.2011.609152
Quantum tunneling often allows pathways to relaxation past energy barriers which are otherwise hard to overcome classically at low temperatures. However, this is not always the case. In this paper we provide simple exactly solvable examples where the barriers each system encounters on its approach to lower and lower energy states become increasingly large and eventually scale with the system size. If the environment couples locally to the physical degrees of freedom in the system, tunnelling under large barriers requires processes whose order in perturbation theory is proportional to the width of the barrier. This results in quantum relaxation rates that are exponentially suppressed in system size: For these quantum systems, no physical bath can provide a mechanism for relaxation that is not dynamically arrested at low temperatures. The examples discussed here are drawn from three dimensional generalizations of Kitaev's toric code, originally devised in the context of topological quantum computing. They are devoid of any local order parameters or symmetry breaking and are thus examples of topological quantum glasses. We construct systems that have slow dynamics similar to either strong or fragile glasses. The example with fragile-like relaxation is interesting in that the topological defects are neither open strings or regular open membranes, but fractal objects with dimension $d^* = ln 3/ ln 2$.
Castelnovo Claudio
Chamon Claudio
No associations
LandOfFree
Topological Quantum Glassiness does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Topological Quantum Glassiness, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Topological Quantum Glassiness will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-663541