Unveiling topological order through multipartite entanglement

Abstract

It is well known that the topological entanglement entropy ($S_{topo}$) of a topologically ordered ground state in 2 spatial dimensions can be captured efficiently by measuring the tripartite quantum information ($I^{3}$) of a specific annular arrangement of three subsystems. However, the nature of the general N-partite information ($I^{N}$) and quantum correlation of a topologically ordered ground state remains unknown. In this work, we study such $I^N$ measure and its nontrivial dependence on the arrangement of $N$ subsystems. For the collection of subsystems (CSS) forming a closed annular structure, the $I^{N}$ measure ($N\geq 3$) is a topological invariant equal to the product of $S_{topo}$ and the Euler characteristic of the CSS embedded on a planar manifold, $|I^{N}|=χS_{topo}$. Importantly, we establish that $I^{N}$ is robust against several deformations of the annular CSS, such as the addition of holes within individual subsystems and handles between nearest-neighbour subsystems. For a general CSS with multiple holes ($n_{h}>1$), we find that the sum of the distinct, multipartite informations measured on the annular CSS around those holes is given by the product of $S_{topo}$, $χ$ and $n_{h}$, $\sum^{n_{h}}_{μ_{i}=1}|I^{N_{μ_{i}}}_{μ_{i}}| = n_{h}χS_{topo}$. The $N^{th}$ order irreducible quantum correlations for an annular CSS of $N$ subsystems is also found to be bounded from above by $|I^{N}|$, which shows the presence of correlations among subsystems arranged in the form of closed loops of all sizes. Our results offer important insight into the nature of the many-particle entanglement and correlations within a topologically ordered state of matter.