Determining quantum phase diagrams of topological Kitaev-inspired models on NISQ quantum hardware

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how topological protection in Kitaev-inspired models enables accurate phase diagram determination on NISQ quantum computers by leveraging intrinsic robustness and measuring entanglement entropy.

Contribution

It introduces a method to simulate Kitaev-inspired models on IBM quantum hardware and accurately determine phase boundaries using topological protection.

Findings

Successful simulation of Kitaev-inspired models on IBM quantum computers.

Accurate determination of quantum phase boundaries using entanglement entropy.

Importance of maintaining particle-hole symmetry for high accuracy.

Abstract

Topological protection is employed in fault-tolerant error correction and in developing quantum algorithms with topological qubits. But, topological protection intrinsic to models being simulated, also robustly protects calculations, even on NISQ hardware. We leverage it by simulating Kitaev-inspired models on IBM quantum computers and accurately determining their phase diagrams. This requires constructing conventional quantum circuits for Majorana braiding to prepare the ground states of Kitaev-inspired models. The entanglement entropy is then measured to calculate the quantum phase boundaries. We show how maintaining particle-hole symmetry when sampling through the Brillouin zone is critical to obtaining high accuracy. This work illustrates how topological protection intrinsic to a quantum model can be employed to perform robust calculations on NISQ hardware, when one measures the appropriate protected quantum properties. It opens the door for further simulation of topological quantum models on quantum hardware available today.