arXiv subjects

Alexey V. Gorshkov

Publications and source records attributed to Alexey V. Gorshkov.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Ultrastrong light-matter interaction in a multimode photonic crystal

Harnessing the interaction between light and matter at the quantum level has been a central theme in atomic physics and quantum optics, with applications from quantum computation to quantum metrology. Combining complex interactions with photonic synthetic materials provides an opportunity to investigate novel quantum phases and phenomena, establishing interesting connections to condensed matter physics. Here we explore many-body phenomena with a single artificial atom coupled to the many discrete modes of a photonic crystal. This experiment reaches the ultrastrong light-matter coupling regime using the circuit quantum electrodynamics paradigm, by galvanically coupling a highly nonlinear fluxonium qubit to a tight-binding lattice of microwave resonators. In this regime, the transport of a single photon becomes a many-body problem, owing to the strong participation of multi-photon bound states arising from interactions that break particle number conservation. Exploiting the effective photon-photon interactions mediated by the qubit, the transport of multiple photons leads to complex multimode dynamics that can be employed for generating a continuous reservoir of strongly-correlated photons, an important resource for quantum networks. This work opens exciting prospects for exploring nonlinear quantum optics at the single-photon level and stabilizing entangled many-body phases of light.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Experimental roadmap for optimal state transfer and entanglement generation in power-law systems

Experimental systems with power-law interactions have recently garnered interest as promising platforms for quantum information processing. Such systems are capable of spreading entanglement superballistically and achieving an asymptotic speed-up over locally interacting systems. Recently, protocols developed by Eldredge et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 170503 (2017)] and Tran et al. [Phys. Rev. X 11, 031016 (2021)] for the task of transferring a quantum state between distant particles quickly were shown to be optimal and saturate theoretical bounds. However, the implementation of these protocols in physical systems with long-range interactions remains to be fully realized. In this work, we provide an experimental roadmap towards realizing fast state-transfer protocols in three classes of atomic and molecular systems with dipolar interactions: polar molecules composed of alkali-metal dimers, neutral atoms in excited Rydberg states, and atoms with strong magnetic moments (e.g. dysprosium). As a guide to near-term experimental implementation, we numerically evaluate the tradeoffs between the two protocols for small system sizes and develop methods to address potential crosstalk errors that may arise during the execution of the protocols.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Estimation of Hamiltonian parameters from thermal states

We upper- and lower-bound the optimal precision with which one can estimate an unknown Hamiltonian parameter via measurements of Gibbs thermal states with a known temperature. The bounds depend on the uncertainty in the Hamiltonian term that contains the parameter and on the term's degree of noncommutativity with the full Hamiltonian: higher uncertainty and commuting operators lead to better precision. We apply the bounds to show that there exist entangled thermal states such that the parameter can be estimated with an error that decreases faster than $1/\sqrt{n}$, beating the standard quantum limit. This result governs Hamiltonians where an unknown scalar parameter (e.g. a component of a magnetic field) is coupled locally and identically to $n$ qubit sensors. In the high-temperature regime, our bounds allow for pinpointing the optimal estimation error, up to a constant prefactor. Our bounds generalize to joint estimations of multiple parameters. In this setting, we recover the high-temperature sample scaling derived previously via techniques based on quantum state discrimination and coding theory. In an application, we show that noncommuting conserved quantities hinder the estimation of chemical potentials.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Long-lived topological time-crystalline order on a quantum processor

Topologically ordered phases of matter elude Landau's symmetry-breaking theory, featuring a variety of intriguing properties such as long-range entanglement and intrinsic robustness against 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.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Error-correcting codes for fermionic quantum simulation

Utilizing the framework of $\mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge theories in the context of Pauli stabilizer codes, we present methodologies for simulating fermions via qubit systems on a two-dimensional square lattice. We investigate the symplectic automorphisms of the Pauli module over the Laurent polynomial ring. This enables us to systematically increase the code distances of stabilizer codes while fixing the rate between encoded logical fermions and physical qubits. We identify a family of stabilizer codes suitable for fermion simulation, achieving code distances of $d=2,3,4,5,6,7$, allowing correction of any $\lfloor \frac{d-1}{2} \rfloor$-qubit error. In contrast to the traditional code concatenation approach, our method can increase the code distances without decreasing the (fermionic) code rate. In particular, we explicitly show all stabilizers and logical operators for codes with code distances of $d=3,4,5$. We provide syndromes for all Pauli errors and invent a syndrome-matching algorithm to compute code distances numerically.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Observation of a finite-energy phase transition in a one-dimensional quantum simulator

One of the most striking many-body phenomena in nature is the sudden change of macroscopic properties as the temperature or energy reaches a critical value. Such equilibrium transitions have been predicted and observed in two and three spatial dimensions, but have long been thought not to exist in one-dimensional (1D) systems. Fifty years ago, Dyson and Thouless pointed out that a phase transition in 1D can occur in the presence of long-range interactions, but an experimental realization has so far not been achieved due to the requirement to both prepare equilibrium states and realize sufficiently long-range interactions. Here we report on the first experimental demonstration of a finite-energy phase transition in 1D. We use the simple observation that finite-energy states can be prepared by time-evolving product initial states and letting them thermalize under the dynamics of a many-body Hamiltonian. By preparing initial states with different energies in a 1D trapped-ion quantum simulator, we study the finite-energy phase diagram of a long-range interacting quantum system. We observe a ferromagnetic equilibrium phase transition as well as a crossover from a low-energy polarized paramagnet to a high-energy unpolarized paramagnet in a system of up to $23$ spins, in excellent agreement with numerical simulations. Our work demonstrates the ability of quantum simulators to realize and study previously inaccessible phases at finite energy density.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Quantum Sensing with Erasure Qubits

The dominant noise in an "erasure qubit" is an erasure -- a type of error whose occurrence and location can be detected. Erasure qubits have potential to reduce the overhead associated with fault tolerance. To date, research on erasure qubits has primarily focused on quantum computing and quantum networking applications. Here, we consider the applicability of erasure qubits to quantum sensing and metrology. We show theoretically that, for the same level of noise, an erasure qubit acts as a more precise sensor or clock compared to its non-erasure counterpart. We experimentally demonstrate this by artificially injecting either erasure errors (in the form of atom loss) or dephasing errors into a differential optical lattice clock comparison, and observe enhanced precision in the case of erasure errors for the same injected error rate. Similar benefits of erasure qubits to sensing can be realized in other quantum platforms like Rydberg atoms and superconducting qubits

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Minimum Entanglement Protocols for Function Estimation

We derive a family of optimal protocols, in the sense of saturating the quantum Cramér-Rao bound, for measuring a linear combination of $d$ field amplitudes with quantum sensor networks, a key subprotocol of general quantum sensor network applications. We demonstrate how to select different protocols from this family under various constraints. Focusing primarily on entanglement-based constraints, we prove the surprising result that highly entangled states are not necessary to achieve optimality in many cases. Specifically, we prove necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of optimal protocols using at most $k$-partite entanglement. We prove that the protocols which satisfy these conditions use the minimum amount of entanglement possible, even when given access to arbitrary controls and ancilla. Our protocols require some amount of time-dependent control, and we show that a related class of time-independent protocols fail to achieve optimal scaling for generic functions.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Improved Digital Quantum Simulation by Non-Unitary Channels

Simulating quantum systems is one of the most promising avenues to harness the computational power of quantum computers. However, hardware errors in noisy near-term devices remain a major obstacle for applications. Ideas based on the randomization of Suzuki-Trotter product formulas have been shown to be a powerful approach to reducing the errors of quantum simulation and lowering the gate count. In this paper, we study the performance of non-unitary simulation channels and consider the error structure of channels constructed from a weighted average of unitary circuits. We show that averaging over just a few simulation circuits can significantly reduce the Trotterization error for both single-step short-time and multi-step long-time simulations. We focus our analysis on two approaches for constructing circuit ensembles for averaging: (i) permuting the order of the terms in the Hamiltonian and (ii) applying a set of global symmetry transformations. We compare our analytical error bounds to empirical performance and show that empirical error reduction surpasses our analytical estimates in most cases. Finally, we test our method on an IonQ trapped-ion quantum computer accessed via the Amazon Braket cloud platform, and benchmark the performance of the averaging approach.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Realization of 1D Anyons with Arbitrary Statistical Phase

Low-dimensional quantum systems can host anyons, particles with exchange statistics that are neither bosonic nor fermionic. Despite indications of a wealth of exotic phenomena, the physics of anyons in one dimension (1D) remains largely unexplored. Here, we realize Abelian anyons in 1D with arbitrary exchange statistics using ultracold atoms in an optical lattice, where we engineer the statistical phase via a density-dependent Peierls phase. We explore the dynamical behavior of two anyons undergoing quantum walks, and observe the anyonic Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect, as well as the formation of bound states without on-site interactions. Once interactions are introduced, we observe spatially asymmetric transport in contrast to the symmetric dynamics of bosons and fermions. Our work forms the foundation for exploring the many-body behavior of 1D anyons.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2023

Page curves and typical entanglement in linear optics

Bosonic Gaussian states are a special class of quantum states in an infinite dimensional Hilbert space that are relevant to universal continuous-variable quantum computation as well as to near-term quantum sampling tasks such as Gaussian Boson Sampling. In this work, we study entanglement within a set of squeezed modes that have been evolved by a random linear optical unitary. We first derive formulas that are asymptotically exact in the number of modes for the Rényi-2 Page curve (the average Rényi-2 entropy of a subsystem of a pure bosonic Gaussian state) and the corresponding Page correction (the average information of the subsystem) in certain squeezing regimes. We then prove various results on the typicality of entanglement as measured by the Rényi-2 entropy by studying its variance. Using the aforementioned results for the Rényi-2 entropy, we upper and lower bound the von Neumann entropy Page curve and prove certain regimes of entanglement typicality as measured by the von Neumann entropy. Our main proofs make use of a symmetry property obeyed by the average and the variance of the entropy that dramatically simplifies the averaging over unitaries. In this light, we propose future research directions where this symmetry might also be exploited. We conclude by discussing potential applications of our results and their generalizations to Gaussian Boson Sampling and to illuminating the relationship between entanglement and computational complexity.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

A sharp phase transition in linear cross-entropy benchmarking

Demonstrations of quantum computational advantage and benchmarks of quantum processors via quantum random circuit sampling are based on evaluating the linear cross-entropy benchmark (XEB). A key question in the theory of XEB is whether it approximates the fidelity of the quantum state preparation. Previous works have shown that the XEB generically approximates the fidelity in a regime where the noise rate per qudit $\varepsilon$ satisfies $\varepsilon N \ll 1$ for a system of $N$ qudits and that this approximation breaks down at large noise rates. Here, we show that the breakdown of XEB as a fidelity proxy occurs as a sharp phase transition at a critical value of $\varepsilon N$ that depends on the circuit architecture and properties of the two-qubit gates, including in particular their entangling power. We study the phase transition using a mapping of average two-copy quantities to statistical mechanics models in random quantum circuit architectures with full or one-dimensional connectivity. We explain the phase transition behavior in terms of spectral properties of the transfer matrix of the statistical mechanics model and identify two-qubit gate sets that exhibit the largest noise robustness.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Entanglement Renormalization Circuits for Chiral Topological Order

Entanglement renormalization circuits are quantum circuits that can be used to prepare large-scale entangled states. For years, it has remained a mystery whether there exist scale-invariant entanglement renormalization circuits for chiral topological order. In this paper, we solve this problem by demonstrating entanglement renormalization circuits for a wide class of chiral topologically ordered states, including a state sharing the same topological properties as Laughlin's bosonic fractional quantum Hall state at filling fraction $1/4$ and eight states with Ising-like non-Abelian fusion rules. The key idea is to build entanglement renormalization circuits by interleaving the conventional multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA) circuit (made of spatially local gates) with quasi-local evolution. Given the miraculous power of this circuit to prepare a wide range of chiral topologically ordered states, we refer to these circuits as MERA with quasi-local evolution (MERAQLE).

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Candidate for a passively protected quantum memory in two dimensions

An interesting problem in the field of quantum error correction involves finding a physical system that hosts a ``passively protected quantum memory,'' defined as an encoded qubit coupled to an environment that naturally wants to correct errors. To date, a quantum memory stable against finite-temperature effects is only known in four spatial dimensions or higher. Here, we take a different approach to realize a stable quantum memory by relying on a driven-dissipative environment. We propose a new model, the photonic-Ising model, which appears to passively correct against both bit-flip and phase-flip errors in two dimensions: A square lattice composed of photonic ``cat qubits'' coupled via dissipative terms which tend to fix errors locally. Inspired by the presence of two distinct $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetry-broken phases, our scheme relies on Ising-like dissipators to protect against bit flips and on a driven-dissipative photonic environment to protect against phase flips. We also discuss possible ways to realize the photonic-Ising model.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Sharp complexity phase transitions generated by entanglement

Entanglement is one of the physical properties of quantum systems responsible for the computational hardness of simulating quantum systems. But while the runtime of specific algorithms, notably tensor network algorithms, explicitly depends on the amount of entanglement in the system, it is unknown whether this connection runs deeper and entanglement can also cause inherent, algorithm-independent complexity. In this work, we quantitatively connect the entanglement present in certain quantum systems to the computational complexity of simulating those systems. Moreover, we completely characterize the entanglement and complexity as a function of a system parameter. Specifically, we consider the task of simulating single-qubit measurements of $k$--regular graph states on $n$ qubits. We show that, as the regularity parameter is increased from $1$ to $n-1$, there is a sharp transition from an easy regime with low entanglement to a hard regime with high entanglement at $k=3$, and a transition back to easy and low entanglement at $k=n-3$. As a key technical result, we prove a duality for the simulation complexity of regular graph states between low and high regularity.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Importance of the spectral gap in estimating ground-state energies

The field of quantum Hamiltonian complexity lies at the intersection of quantum many-body physics and computational complexity theory, with deep implications to both fields. The main object of study is the LocalHamiltonian problem, which is concerned with estimating the ground-state energy of a local Hamiltonian and is complete for the class QMA, a quantum generalization of the class NP. A major challenge in the field is to understand the complexity of the LocalHamiltonian problem in more physically natural parameter regimes. One crucial parameter in understanding the ground space of any Hamiltonian in many-body physics is the spectral gap, which is the difference between the smallest two eigenvalues. Despite its importance in quantum many-body physics, the role played by the spectral gap in the complexity of the LocalHamiltonian is less well-understood. In this work, we make progress on this question by considering the precise regime, in which one estimates the ground-state energy to within inverse exponential precision. Computing ground-state energies precisely is a task that is important for quantum chemistry and quantum many-body physics. In the setting of inverse-exponential precision, there is a surprising result that the complexity of LocalHamiltonian is magnified from QMA to PSPACE, the class of problems solvable in polynomial space. We clarify the reason behind this boost in complexity. Specifically, we show that the full complexity of the high precision case only comes about when the spectral gap is exponentially small. As a consequence of the proof techniques developed to show our results, we uncover important implications for the representability and circuit complexity of ground states of local Hamiltonians, the theory of uniqueness of quantum witnesses, and techniques for the amplification of quantum witnesses in the presence of postselection.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Continuous Symmetry Breaking in a Trapped-Ion Spin Chain

One-dimensional systems exhibiting a continuous symmetry can host quantum phases of matter with true long-range order only in the presence of sufficiently long-range interactions. In most physical systems, however, the interactions are short-ranged, hindering the emergence of such phases in one dimension. Here we use a one-dimensional trapped-ion quantum simulator to prepare states with long-range spin order that extends over the system size of up to $23$ spins and is characteristic of the continuous symmetry-breaking phase of matter. Our preparation relies on simultaneous control over an array of tightly focused individual-addressing laser beams, generating long-range spin-spin interactions. We also observe a disordered phase with frustrated correlations. We further study the phases at different ranges of interaction and the out-of-equilibrium response to symmetry-breaking perturbations. This work opens an avenue to study new quantum phases and out-of-equilibrium dynamics in low-dimensional systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Quantum Non-Demolition Photon Counting in a 2d Rydberg Atom Array

Rydberg arrays merge the collective behavior of ordered atomic arrays with the controllability and optical nonlinearities of Rydberg systems, resulting in a powerful platform for realizing photonic many-body physics. As an application of this platform, we propose a protocol for quantum non-demolition (QND) photon counting. Our protocol involves photon storage in the Rydberg array, an observation phase consisting of a series of Rabi flops to a Rydberg state and measurements, and retrieval of the stored photons. The Rabi frequency experiences a $\sqrt{n}$ collective enhancement, where $n$ is the number of photons stored in the array. Projectively measuring the presence or absence of a Rydberg excitation after oscillating for some time is thus a weak measurement of photon number. We demonstrate that the photon counting protocol can be used to distill Fock states from arbitrary pure or mixed initial states and to perform photonic state discrimination. We confirm that the protocol still works in the presence of experimentally realistic noise.

quant-ph↗