Critical non-equilibrium phases from noisy topological memories

Quantum Physics arXiv:2601.10792 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 15 Jan 2026] Title:Critical non-equilibrium phases from noisy topological memories Authors:Amir-Reza Negari, Subhayan Sahu, Jan Behrends, Benjamin Béri, Timothy H. Hsieh View a PDF of the paper titled Critical non-equilibrium phases from noisy topological memories, by Amir-Reza Negari and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:We demonstrate the existence of an extended non-equilibrium critical phase, characterized by sub-exponential decay of conditional mutual information (CMI), in the surface code subject to heralded random Pauli measurement channels. By mapping the resulting mixed state to the ensemble of completely packed loops on a square lattice, we relate the extended phase to the Goldstone phase of the loop model. In particular, CMI is controlled by the characteristic length scale of loops, and we use analytic results of the latter to establish polylogarithmic decay of CMI in the critical phase. We find that the critical phase retains partial logical information that can be recovered by a global decoder, but not by any quasi-local decoder. To demonstrate this, we introduce a diagnostic called punctured coherent information which provides a necessary condition for quasi-local decoding. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) Cite as: arXiv:2601.10792 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2601.10792v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.10792 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Amir-Reza Negari [view email] [v1] Thu, 15 Jan 2026 19:00:04 UTC (3,729 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Critical non-equilibrium phases from noisy topological memories, by Amir-Reza Negari and 3 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-01 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.str-el References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)