Unconventional topological mixed-state transition and critical phase induced by self-dual coherent errors

Topologically ordered phases host anyons that can condense, leading to a trivial gapped phase. Such a transition can be induced by coupling to an environment. This paper explores a scenario where the coupling between a topologically ordered phase and the environment maintains a self-duality symmetry that interchanges anyons with nontrivial mutual statistics. The authors find that this duality symmetry prevents anyon condensation and, further, for a range of the coupling strength, the topological phase is destroyed in favor of an exotic critical phase.