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Probing Topological Entanglement on Large Scales

Robert Ott1,2, Torsten V. Zache1,2, Nishad Maskara3, Mikhail D. Lukin3, Peter Zoller1,2, and Hannes Pichler1,2

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 090401 – Published 25 August, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/mdsf-wrbj

Abstract

Topologically ordered quantum matter exhibits intriguing long-range patterns of entanglement, which reveal themselves in subsystem entropies. However, measuring such entropies, which can be used to certify topological order, on large partitions is challenging and becomes practically unfeasible for large systems. We propose a protocol based on local adiabatic deformations of the Hamiltonian which extracts the universal features of long-range topological entanglement from measurements on small subsystems of finite size, trading an exponential number of measurements against a polynomial-time evolution. Our protocol is general and readily applicable to various quantum simulation architectures. We apply our method to various string-net models representing both Abelian and non-Abelian topologically ordered phases and illustrate its application to neutral atom tweezer arrays with numerical simulations.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 090401– Published 25 August, 2025
  • Received 28 August 2024
  • Revised 5 March 2025
  • Accepted 25 June 2025
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