Robust Teleportation of a Surface Code and Cascade of Topological Quantum Phase Transitions

Abstract

Teleportation is a facet where quantum measurements can act as a powerful resource in quantum physics, as local measurements allow us to steer quantum information in a nonlocal way. While this has long been established for a single Bell pair, the teleportation of a many-qubit entangled state using nonmaximally entangled resources presents a fundamentally different challenge. Here, we investigate a tangible protocol for teleporting a long-range entangled surface-code state using elementary Bell measurements and its stability in the presence of coherent errors that weaken the Bell entanglement. We relate the underlying threshold problem to the physics of anyon condensation under weak measurements and map it to a variant of the Ashkin-Teller model of statistical mechanics with Nishimori-type disorder, which gives rise to a cascade of phase transitions. Tuning the angle of the local Bell measurements, we find a continuously varying threshold. Notably, the threshold moves to infinity for the X+Z angle along the self-dual line—indicating that infinitesimally weak entanglement is sufficient in teleporting a self-dual topological surface code. Our teleportation protocol, which can be readily implemented in dynamically configurable Rydberg-atom arrays, thereby gives guidance for a practical demonstration of the power of quantum measurements. Published by the American Physical Society 2024