Lieb-Robinson bounds and the generation of correlations and topological quantum order

The Lieb-Robinson bound states that local Hamiltonian evolution in nonrelativistic quantum mechanical theories gives rise to the notion of an effective light-cone with exponentially decaying tails. We discuss several consequences of this result in the context of quantum information theory. First, we show that the information that leaks out to space-like separated regions is negligable, and that there is a finite speed at which correlations and entanglement can be distributed. Second, we discuss how these ideas can be used to prove lower bounds on the time it takes to convert states without topological quantum order to states with that property. Finally, we show that the rate at which entropy can be created in a block of spins scales like the boundary of that block.