Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: In thermodynamics it is common to assume that the choice of ensemble (e.g., micro-canonical, canonical, or grand-canonical) should not affect the underlying physics in the thermodynamics limit. We show that this does not necessarily hold for critical exponents. Examining a simplified model of quantum error correction (single step encoding and decoding by a random unitary) and the behavior of both the fidelity and magic at the corresponding threshold, we find different exponents when using generic channels or supposedly equivalent quantum trajectories. Interestingly, the obtained exponents saturate a recently derived information theoretic bound by Feldman et al. (2026), which we extend from the grand-canonical to the canonical case, including intermediate ensembles which we define. Moreover, even the existence of the transition is shown to be ensemble-dependent.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Dror, Idan, Goldstein, Moshe
Institution: Tel Aviv University
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Israel Science Foundation
Awards: G4725664646, G7936132668
OpenAlex ID: W7213918154