No Arabic abstract
The ability of implementing quantum operations plays fundamental role in manipulating quantum systems. Creation and annihilation operators which transform a quantum state to another by adding or subtracting a particle are crucial of constructing quantum description of many body quantum theory and quantum field theory. Here we present a quantum algorithm to perform them by the linear combination of unitary operations associated with a two-qubit ancillary system. Our method can realize creation and annihilation operators simultaneously in the subspace of the whole system. A prototypical experiment was performed with a 4-qubit Nuclear Magnetic Resonance processor, demonstrating the algorithm via full state tomography. The creation and annihilation operators are realized with a fidelity all above 96% and a probability about 50%. Moreover, our method can be employed to quantum random walk in an arbitrary initial state. With the prosperous development of quantum computing, our work provides a quantum control technology to implement non-unitary evolution in near-term quantum computer.
The photon creation and annihilation operators are cornerstones of the quantum description of the electromagnetic field. They signify the isomorphism of the optical Hilbert space to that of the harmonic oscillator and the bosonic nature of photons. We perform complete experimental characterization (quantum process tomography) of these operators. By measuring their effect on coherent states, we obtain their process tensor in the Fock basis, which explicitly shows the raising and lowering properties of these operators with respect to photon number states. This is the first experimental demonstration of complete tomography of non-deterministic quantum processes.
Solving finite-temperature properties of quantum many-body systems is generally challenging to classical computers due to their high computational complexities. In this article, we present experiments to demonstrate a hybrid quantum-classical simulation of thermal quantum states. By combining a classical probabilistic model and a 5-qubit programmable superconducting quantum processor, we prepare Gibbs states and excited states of Heisenberg XY and XXZ models with high fidelity and compute thermal properties including the variational free energy, energy, and entropy with a small statistical error. Our approach combines the advantage of classical probabilistic models for sampling and quantum co-processors for unitary transformations. We show that the approach is scalable in the number of qubits, and has a self-verifiable feature, revealing its potentials in solving large-scale quantum statistical mechanics problems on near-term intermediate-scale quantum computers.
Conversion of vacuum fluctuations into real particles was first predicted by L. Parker considering an expanding universe, followed in S. Hawkings work on black hole radiation. Since their experimental observation is challenging, analogue systems have gained attention in the verification of this concept. Here we propose an experimental set-up consisting of two adjacent piezoelectric semiconducting layers, one of them carrying dynamic quantum dots (DQDs), and the other being p-doped with an attached gate on top, which introduces a space-dependent layer conductivity. The propagation of surface acoustic waves (SAWs) on the latter layer is governed by a wave equation with an effective metric. In the frame of the DQDs, this space- and time-dependent metric possesses a sonic horizon for SAWs and resembles that of a two dimensional non-rotating and uncharged black hole to some extent. The non-thermal steady state of the DQD spin indicates particle creation in form of piezophonons.
Four-body interaction plays an important role in many-body systems, and it can exhibit interesting phase transition behaviors. Historically it was the need to efficiently simulate quantum systems that lead the idea of a quantum computer. In this Letter, we report the experimental demonstration of a four-body interaction in a four- qubit nuclear magnetic resonance quantum information processor. The strongly modulating pulse is used to implement spin selective excitation. The results show a good agreement between theory and experiment.
As one of the most intriguing intrinsic properties of quantum world, quantum superposition provokes great interests in its own generation. Oszmaniec [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 110403 (2016)] have proven that though a universal quantum machine that creates superposition of arbitrary two unknown states is physically impossible, a probabilistic protocol exists in the case of two input states have nonzero overlaps with the referential state. Here we report a heralded quantum machine realizing superposition of arbitrary two unknown photonic qubits as long as they have nonzero overlaps with the horizontal polarization state $|Hrangle$. A total of 11 different qubit pairs are chosen to test this protocol by comparing the reconstructed output state with theoretical expected superposition of input states. We obtain the average fidelity as high as 0.99, which shows the excellent reliability of our realization. This realization not only deepens our understanding of quantum superposition but also has significant applications in quantum information and quantum computation, e.g., generating non-classical states in the context of quantum optics and realizing information compression by coherent superposition of results of independent runs of subroutines in a quantum computation.