Code Swendsen-Wang Dynamics

Abstract: An important open question about Markov chains for preparing quantum Gibbs states is proving rapid mixing. However, rapid mixing at low temperatures has only been proven for Gibbs states with no thermally stable phases, e.g., the 2D toric code. Inspired by Swendsen-Wang dynamics, in this work we give a simple Markov chain, Code Swendsen-Wang dynamics, for preparing Gibbs states of commuting Hamiltonians. We prove rapid mixing of this chain for classes of quantum and classical Hamiltonians with thermally stable phases, including the 4D toric code, at any temperature. We conjecture its efficiency for all code Hamiltonians away from first-order phase transition points.