Self-Correcting Quantum Memory in a Thermal Environment

Understand

The ability to store information is of fundamental importance to any computer, be it classical or quantum.

• To identify systems for quantum memories which rely, analogously to classical memories, on passive error protection (`self-correction') is of greatest interest in quantum information science.
• While systems with topological ground states have been considered to be promising candidates, a large class of them was recently proven unstable against thermal fluctuations.
• Here, we propose two-dimensional (2D) spin models unaffected by this result.