Topologically ordered phases of matter elude Landau’s symmetry-breaking theory, featuring a variety of intriguing properties such as long-range entanglement and intrinsic robustnessagainst local perturbations. Their extension to periodically driven systems gives rise to exotic new phenomena that are forbidden in thermal equilibrium. Here, we report the observation of signatures of such a phenomenon — a prethermal topologically ordered time crystal — with programmable superconducting qubits arranged on a square lattice. By periodically driving the superconducting qubits with a surface-code Hamiltonian, we observe discrete time-translation symmetry breaking dynamics that is only manifested in the subharmonic temporal response of nonlocal logical operators. We further connect the observed dynamics to the underlying topological order by measuring a nonzero topological entanglement entropy and studying its subsequent dynamics. Our results demonstrate the potential to explore exotic topologically ordered nonequilibrium phases of matter with noisy intermediate-scale quantum processors.
With the aim of studying nonperturbative out-of-equilibrium dynamics of high-energy particle collisions on quantum simulators, we investigate the scattering dynamics of lattice quantumelectrodynamics in 1+1 dimensions. Working in the bosonized formulation of the model, we propose an analog circuit-QED implementation that is native to the platform, requires minimal ingredients and approximations, and enables practical schemes for particle wave-packet preparation and evolution. Furthermore, working in the thermodynamic limit, we use uniform-matrix-product-state tensor networks to construct multi-particle wave-packet states, evolve them in time, and detect outgoing particles post collision. This facilitates the numerical simulation of scattering experiments in both confined and deconfined regimes of the model at different energies, giving rise to rich phenomenology, including inelastic production of quark and meson states, meson disintegration, and dynamical string formation and breaking. We obtain elastic and inelastic scattering cross sections, together with time-resolved momentum and position distributions of the outgoing particles. This study highlights the role of classical and quantum simulation in enhancing our understanding of scattering processes in quantum field theories in real time.
Dynamical decoupling has been shown to be effective in reducing gate errors in most quantum computation platforms and is therefore projected to play an essential role in future fault-tolerantconstructions. In superconducting circuits, however, it has proven difficult to utilize the benefits of dynamical decoupling. In this work, we present a theoretical proposal that incorporates a continuous version of dynamical decoupling, namely spin locking, with a coupler-based CZ gate for transmons and provide analytical and numerical results that demonstrate its effectiveness.
Circuit quantum electrodynamics is one of the most promising platforms for efficient quantum simulation and computation. In recent groundbreaking experiments, the immense flexibilityof superconducting microwave resonators was utilized to realize hyperbolic lattices that emulate quantum physics in negatively curved space. Here we investigate experimentally feasible settings in which a few superconducting qubits are coupled to a bath of photons evolving on the hyperbolic lattice. We compare our numerical results for finite lattices with analytical results for continuous hyperbolic space on the Poincaré disk. We find good agreement between the two descriptions in the long-wavelength regime. We show that photon-qubit bound states have a curvature-limited size. We propose to use a qubit as a local probe of the hyperbolic bath, for example by measuring the relaxation dynamics of the qubit. We find that, although the boundary effects strongly impact the photonic density of states, the spectral density is well described by the continuum theory. We show that interactions between qubits are mediated by photons propagating along geodesics. We demonstrate that the photonic bath can give rise to geometrically-frustrated hyperbolic quantum spin models with finite-range or exponentially-decaying interaction.
We show how quantum many-body systems on hyperbolic lattices with nearest-neighbor hopping and local interactions can be mapped onto quantum field theories in continuous negativelycurved space. The underlying lattices have recently been realized experimentally with superconducting resonators and therefore allow for a table-top quantum simulation of quantum physics in curved background. Our mapping provides a computational tool to determine observables of the discrete system even for large lattices, where exact diagonalization fails. As an application and proof of principle we quantitatively reproduce the ground state energy, spectral gap, and correlation functions of the noninteracting lattice system by means of analytic formulas on the Poincaré disk, and show how conformal symmetry emerges for large lattices. This sets the stage for studying interactions and disorder on hyperbolic graphs in the future. Our analysis also reveals in which sense discrete hyperbolic lattices emulate the continuous geometry of negatively curved space and thus can be used to resolve fundamental open problems at the interface of interacting many-body systems, quantum field theory in curved space, and quantum gravity.
Qubits strongly coupled to a photonic crystal give rise to many exotic physical scenarios, beginning with single and multi-excitation qubit-photon dressed bound states comprising inducedspatially localized photonic modes, centered around the qubits, and the qubits themselves. The localization of these states changes with qubit detuning from the band-edge, offering an avenue of in situ control of bound state interaction. Here, we present experimental results from a device with two qubits coupled to a superconducting microwave photonic crystal and realize tunable on-site and inter-bound state interactions. We observe a fourth-order two photon virtual process between bound states indicating strong coupling between the photonic crystal and qubits. Due to their localization-dependent interaction, these states offer the ability to create one-dimensional chains of bound states with tunable and potentially long-range interactions that preserve the qubits‘ spatial organization, a key criterion for realization of certain quantum many-body models. The widely tunable, strong and robust interactions demonstrated with this system are promising benchmarks towards realizing larger, more complex systems of bound states.