No Arabic abstract
The presence of long-range quantum spin correlations underlies a variety of physical phenomena in condensed matter systems, potentially including high-temperature superconductivity. However, many properties of exotic strongly correlated spin systems (e.g., spin liquids) have proved difficult to study, in part because calculations involving N-body entanglement become intractable for as few as N~30 particles. Feynman divined that a quantum simulator - a special-purpose analog processor built using quantum particles (qubits) - would be inherently adept at such problems. In the context of quantum magnetism, a number of experiments have demonstrated the feasibility of this approach. However, simulations of quantum magnetism allowing controlled, tunable interactions between spins localized on 2D and 3D lattices of more than a few 10s of qubits have yet to be demonstrated, owing in part to the technical challenge of realizing large-scale qubit arrays. Here we demonstrate a variable-range Ising-type spin-spin interaction J_ij on a naturally occurring 2D triangular crystal lattice of hundreds of spin-1/2 particles (9Be+ ions stored in a Penning trap), a computationally relevant scale more than an order of magnitude larger than existing experiments. We show that a spin-dependent optical dipole force can produce an antiferromagnetic interaction J_ij ~ 1/d_ij^a, where a is tunable over 0<a<3; d_ij is the distance between spin pairs. These power-laws correspond physically to infinite-range (a=0), Coulomb-like (a=1), monopole-dipole (a=2) and dipole-dipole (a=3) couplings. Experimentally, we demonstrate excellent agreement with theory for 0.05<a<1.4. This demonstration coupled with the high spin-count, excellent quantum control and low technical complexity of the Penning trap brings within reach simulation of interesting and otherwise computationally intractable problems in quantum magnetism.
Quantum computers and simulators may offer significant advantages over their classical counterparts, providing insights into quantum many-body systems and possibly improving performance for solving exponentially hard problems, such as optimization and satisfiability. Here we report the implementation of a low-depth Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) using an analog quantum simulator. We estimate the ground state energy of the Transverse Field Ising Model with long-range interactions with tunable range and we optimize the corresponding combinatorial classical problem by sampling the QAOA output with high-fidelity, single-shot individual qubit measurements. We execute the algorithm with both an exhaustive search and closed-loop optimization of the variational parameters, approximating the ground state energy with up to 40 trapped-ion qubits. We benchmark the experiment with bootstrapping heuristic methods scaling polynomially with the system size. We observe, in agreement with numerics, that the QAOA performance does not degrade significantly as we scale up the system size, and that the runtime is approximately independent from the number of qubits. We finally give a comprehensive analysis of the errors occurring in our system, a crucial step in the path forward towards the application of the QAOA to more general problem instances.
Quantum-classical hybrid algorithms are emerging as promising candidates for near-term practical applications of quantum information processors in a wide variety of fields ranging from chemistry to physics and materials science. We report on the experimental implementation of such an algorithm to solve a quantum chemistry problem, using a digital quantum simulator based on trapped ions. Specifically, we implement the variational quantum eigensolver algorithm to calculate the molecular ground state energies of two simple molecules and experimentally demonstrate and compare different encoding methods using up to four qubits. Furthermore, we discuss the impact of measurement noise as well as mitigation strategies and indicate the potential for adaptive implementations focused on reaching chemical accuracy, which may serve as a cross-platform benchmark for multi-qubit quantum simulators.
Nascent platforms for programmable quantum simulation offer unprecedented access to new regimes of far-from-equilibrium quantum many-body dynamics in (approximately) isolated systems. Here, achieving precise control over quantum many-body entanglement is an essential task for quantum sensing and computation. Extensive theoretical work suggests that these capabilities can enable dynamical phases and critical phenomena that exhibit topologically-robust methods to create, protect, and manipulate quantum entanglement that self-correct against large classes of errors. However, to date, experimental realizations have been confined to classical (non-entangled) symmetry-breaking orders. In this work, we demonstrate an emergent dynamical symmetry protected topological phase (EDSPT), in a quasiperiodically-driven array of ten $^{171}text{Yb}^+$ hyperfine qubits in Honeywells System Model H1 trapped-ion quantum processor. This phase exhibits edge qubits that are dynamically protected from control errors, cross-talk, and stray fields. Crucially, this edge protection relies purely on emergent dynamical symmetries that are absolutely stable to generic coherent perturbations. This property is special to quasiperiodically driven systems: as we demonstrate, the analogous edge states of a periodically driven qubit-array are vulnerable to symmetry-breaking errors and quickly decohere. Our work paves the way for implementation of more complex dynamical topological orders that would enable error-resilient techniques to manipulate quantum information.
Quantum simulation of spin models can provide insight into complex problems that are difficult or impossible to study with classical computers. Trapped ions are an established platform for quantum simulation, but only systems with fewer than 20 ions have demonstrated quantum correlations. Here we study non-equilibrium, quantum spin dynamics arising from an engineered, homogeneous Ising interaction in a two-dimensional array of $^9$Be$^+$ ions in a Penning trap. We verify entanglement in the form of spin-squeezed states for up to 219 ions, directly observing 4.0$pm$0.9 dB of spectroscopic enhancement. We also observe evidence of non-Gaussian, over-squeezed states in the full counting statistics. We find good agreement with ab-initio theory that includes competition between entanglement and decoherence, laying the groundwork for simulations of the transverse-field Ising model with variable-range interactions, for which numerical solutions are, in general, classically intractable.
Quantum simulation using synthetic systems is a promising route to solve outstanding quantum many-body problems in regimes where other approaches, including numerical ones, fail. Many platforms are being developed towards this goal, in particular based on trapped ions, superconducting circuits, neutral atoms or molecules. All of which face two key challenges: (i) scaling up the ensemble size, whilst retaining high quality control over the parameters and (ii) certifying the outputs for these large systems. Here, we use programmable arrays of individual atoms trapped in optical tweezers, with interactions controlled by laser-excitation to Rydberg states to implement an iconic many-body problem, the antiferromagnetic 2D transverse field Ising model. We push this platform to an unprecedented regime with up to 196 atoms manipulated with high fidelity. We probe the antiferromagnetic order by dynamically tuning the parameters of the Hamiltonian. We illustrate the versatility of our platform by exploring various system sizes on two qualitatively different geometries, square and triangular arrays. We obtain good agreement with numerical calculations up to a computationally feasible size (around 100 particles). This work demonstrates that our platform can be readily used to address open questions in many-body physics.