Classical criticality establishes quantum topological order

Abstract

We establish an important duality correspondence between topological order in quantum many body systems and criticality in ferromagnetic classical spin systems. We show how such a correspondence leads to a classical and simple procedure for characterization of topological order in an important set of quantum entangled states, namely the Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) states. To this end, we introduce a particular quantum Hamiltonian which allows us to consider the existence of a topological phase transition from quantum CSS states to a magnetized state. We study the ground state fidelity in order to find non-analyticity in the wave function as a signature of a topological phase transition. Since hypergraphs can be used to map any arbitrary CSS state to a classical spin model, we show that fidelity of the quantum model defined on a hypergraph $H$ is mapped to the heat capacity of the classical spin model defined on dual hypergraph $\tilde{H}$. Consequently, we show that a ferromagnetic-paramagnetic phase transition in a classical model is mapped to a topological phase transition in the corresponding quantum model. We also show that magnetization does not behave as a local order parameter at the transition point while the classical order parameter is mapped to a non-local measure on the quantum side, further indicating the non local nature of the transition. Our procedure not only opens the door for identification of topological phases via the existence of a local and classical quantity, i.e. critical point, but also offers the potential to classify various topological phases through the concept of universality in phase transitions.