On Thermal Stability of Topological Qubit in Kitaev's 4D Model

Abstract

We analyse stability of the four-dimensional Kitaev model — a candidate for scalable quantum memory — in finite temperature within the weak coupling Markovian limit. It is shown that, below a critical temperature, certain topological qubit observables X and Z possess relaxation times exponentially long in the size of the system. Their construction involves polynomial in system size algorithm which uses as an input the results of measurements performed on all individual spins. We also discuss the drawbacks of such candidate for quantum memory and mention the implications of the stability of qubit for statistical mechanics.