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Simone Warzel –   Technical University of Munich

Wednesday, June 18th , 2025

Zoom opens: 10:30AM DST

Seminar begins: 10:45AM DST

Rapid thermalization of toric codes

Toric codes are prominent examples of quantum Hamiltonians that promise to encode quantum information in their ground states stably.  In contact with a heat bath, the code’s quantum state will eventually converge to a Gibbs state. We investigate the mixing time of this process when described by a Davis quantum Markovian semigroup. We establish a bound on the mixing time in the high-temperature regime, which is logarithmic in the system's size, thereby placing this class of quantum models on par with classical results on Glauber dynamics. This is done by establishing a modified logarithmic Sobolev inequality. 

In this talk, I will explain the models, the basic concepts, and the ideas behind the above result  (joint work with Angela Capel, Cambyse Rouze and Sebastian Stengele).