Kitaev honeycomb tensor networks: exact unitary circuits and applications

TL;DR

This paper develops an exact tensor network representation of the Kitaev honeycomb model's eigenstates, providing insights into its topological properties and correlations, and discusses potential extensions and computational methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel 3d tensor network construction for the Kitaev honeycomb model's eigenstates, integrating various mathematical techniques into a unified framework.

Findings

Tensor network accurately represents ground and excited states.

Fidelity and correlation functions are easily computed within this framework.

Contracting the 3d tensor network to a 2d PEPS is feasible with trade-offs.

Abstract

The Kitaev honeycomb model is a paradigm of exactly-solvable models, showing non-trivial physical properties such as topological quantum order, abelian and non-abelian anyons, and chirality. Its solution is one of the most beautiful examples of the interplay of different mathematical techniques in condensed matter physics. In this paper, we show how to derive a tensor network (TN) description of the eigenstates of this spin-1/2 model in the thermodynamic limit, and in particular for its ground state. In our setting, eigenstates are naturally encoded by an exact 3d TN structure made of fermionic unitary operators, corresponding to the unitary quantum circuit building up the many-body quantum state. In our derivation we review how the different "solution ingredients" of the Kitaev honeycomb model can be accounted for in the TN language, namely: Jordan-Wigner transformation, braidings of Majorana modes, fermionic Fourier transformation, and Bogoliubov transformation. The TN built in this way allows for a clear understanding of several properties of the model. In particular, we show how the fidelity diagram is straightforward both at zero temperature and at finite temperature in the vortex-free sector. We also show how the properties of two-point correlation functions follow easily. Finally, we also discuss the pros and cons of contracting of our 3d TN down to a 2d Projected Entangled Pair State (PEPS) with finite bond dimension. The results in this paper can be extended to generalizations of the Kitaev model, e.g., to other lattices, spins, and dimensions.