Thermal states of the Kitaev honeycomb model: a Bures metric analysis

TL;DR

This paper investigates how finite temperature affects topological phase transitions in the Kitaev honeycomb model by analyzing the Bures metric on thermal states, revealing distinct temperature scaling behaviors and a relation to crossover temperatures.

Contribution

It extends previous zero-temperature analyses by characterizing finite-temperature effects on topological phases using the Bures metric in the Kitaev model.

Findings

Different parameter space regions show distinct temperature scaling of the Bures metric.

A simple relation between metric elements and crossover temperature is established.

Finite temperature effects on topological phase transitions are characterized.

Abstract

We analyze the Bures metric over the canonical thermal states for the Kitaev honeycomb mode. In this way the effects of finite temperature on topological phase transitions can be studied. Different regions in the parameter space of the model can be clearly identified in terms of different temperature scaling behavior of the Bures metric tensor. Furthermore, we show a simple relation between the metric elements and the crossover temperature between the quasi-critical and the quasi-classical regions. These results extend the ones of [29,30] to finite temperatures.