Thermalization of topological entropy after a quantum quench

Topologically ordered quantum phases are robust in the sense that perturbations in the Hamiltonian of the system will not change the topological nature of the ground-state wave function. However, in order to exploit topological order for applications such as self-correcting quantum memories and information processing, these states need to be also robust both dynamically and at finite temperature in the presence of an environment. It is well known that systems like the toric code in two spatial dimensions are fragile in temperature. In this paper, we show a completely analytic treatment of the toric code away from equilibrium, after a quantum quench of the system Hamiltonian. We show that, despite being subject to unitary evolution (and at zero temperature), the long-time behavior of the topological entropy is thermal, therefore vanishing. If the quench preserves a local gauge structure, there is a residual long-lived topological entropy. This also is the thermal behavior in presence of such gauge constraints. The result is obtained by studying the time evolution of the topological 2-Rényi entropy in a fully analytical, exact way.