On thermalization in Kitaev's 2D model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermalization behavior of the 2D Kitaev model, revealing that its relaxation time is system-size independent and exponentially related to temperature, indicating it cannot serve as a quantum or classical memory.

Contribution

It provides a rigorous analysis of the relaxation time in the 2D Kitaev model, showing it is bounded and not suitable as a memory device.

Findings

Relaxation time is bounded independently of system size.

Relaxation time scales exponentially with inverse temperature.

The model cannot function as a quantum or classical memory.

Abstract

The thermalization process of the 2D Kitaev model is studied within the Markovian weak coupling approximation. It is shown that its largest relaxation time is bounded from above by a constant independent of the system size and proportional to $\exp(2\Delta/kT)$ where $\Delta$ is an energy gap over the 4-fold degenerate ground state. This means that the 2D Kitaev model is not an example of a memory, neither quantum nor classical.