arXiv subjects

Andrew C. Potter

Publications and source records attributed to Andrew C. Potter.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Random insights into the complexity of two-dimensional tensor network calculations

Projected entangled pair states (PEPS) offer memory-efficient representations of some quantum many-body states that obey an entanglement area law, and are the basis for classical simulations of ground states in two-dimensional (2d) condensed matter systems. However, rigorous results show that exactly computing observables from a 2d PEPS state is generically a computationally hard problem. Yet approximation schemes for computing properties of 2d PEPS are regularly used, and empirically seen to succeed, for a large subclass of (not too entangled) condensed matter ground states. Adopting the philosophy of random matrix theory, in this work we analyze the complexity of approximately contracting a 2d random PEPS by exploiting an analytic mapping to an effective replicated statistical mechanics model that permits a controlled analysis at large bond dimension. Through this statistical-mechanics lens, we argue that: i) although approximately sampling wave-function amplitudes of random PEPS faces a computational-complexity phase transition above a critical bond dimension, ii) one can generically efficiently estimate the norm and correlation functions for any finite bond dimension. These results are supported numerically for various bond-dimension regimes. It is an important open question whether the above results for random PEPS apply more generally also to PEPS representing physically relevant ground states

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Floquet codes and phases in twist-defect networks

We introduce a class of models, dubbed paired twist-defect networks, that generalize the structure of Kitaev's honeycomb model for which there is a direct equivalence between: i) Floquet codes (FCs), ii) adiabatic loops of gapped Hamiltonians, and iii) unitary loops or Floquet-enriched topological orders (FETs) many-body localized phases. This formalism allows one to apply well-characterized topological index theorems for FETs to understand the dynamics of FCs, and to rapidly assess the code properties of many FC models. As an application, we show that the Honeycomb Floquet code of Haah and Hastings is governed by an irrational value of the chiral Floquet index, which implies a topological obstruction to forming a simple, logical boundary with the same periodicity as the bulk measurement schedule. In addition, we construct generalizations of the Honeycomb Floquet code exhibiting arbitrary anyon-automorphism dynamics for general types of Abelian topological order.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Bulk-boundary correspondence for intrinsically-gapless SPTs from group cohomology

Intrinsically gapless symmetry protected topological phases (igSPT) are gapless systems with SPT edge states with properties that could not arise in a gapped system with the same symmetry and dimensionality. igSPT states arise from gapless systems in which an anomaly in the low-energy (IR) symmetry group emerges from an extended anomaly-free microscopic (UV) symmetry We construct a general framework for constructing lattice models for igSPT phases with emergent anomalies classified by group cohomology, and establish a direct connection between the emergent anomaly, group-extension, and topological edge states by gauging the extending symmetry. In many examples, the edge-state protection has a physically transparent mechanism: the extending UV symmetry operations pump lower dimensional SPTs onto the igSPT edge, tuning the edge to a (multi)critical point between different SPTs protected by the IR symmetry. In two- and three- dimensional systems, an additional possibility is that the emergent anomaly can be satisfied by an anomalous symmetry-enriched topological order, which we call a quotient-symmetry enriched topological order (QSET) that is sharply distinguished from the non-anomalous UV SETs by an edge phase transition. We construct exactly solvable lattice models with QSET order.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Characterizing a non-equilibrium phase transition on a quantum computer

At transitions between phases of matter, physical systems can exhibit universal behavior independent of their microscopic details. Probing such behavior in quantum many-body systems is a challenging and practically important problem that can be solved by quantum computers, potentially exponentially faster than by classical computers. In this work, we use the Quantinuum H1-1 quantum computer to realize a quantum extension of a simple classical disease spreading process that is known to exhibit a non-equilibrium phase transition between an active and absorbing state. Using techniques such as qubit-reuse and error avoidance based on real-time conditional logic (utilized extensively in quantum error correction), we are able to implement large instances of the model with $73$ sites and up to $72$ circuit layers, and quantitatively determine the model's critical properties. This work demonstrates how quantum computers capable of mid-circuit resets, measurements, and conditional logic enable the study of difficult problems in quantum many-body physics: the simulation of open quantum system dynamics and non-equilibrium phase transitions.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Qubit-efficient simulation of thermal states with quantum tensor networks

We present a holographic quantum simulation algorithm to variationally prepare thermal states of $d$-dimensional interacting quantum many-body systems, using only enough hardware qubits to represent a ($d$-1)-dimensional cross-section. This technique implements the thermal state by approximately unraveling the quantum matrix-product density operator (qMPDO) into a stochastic mixture of quantum matrix product states (sto-qMPS). The parameters of the quantum circuits generating the qMPS and of the probability distribution generating the stochastic mixture are determined through a variational optimization procedure. We demonstrate a small-scale proof of principle demonstration of this technique on Quantinuum's trapped-ion quantum processor to simulate thermal properties of correlated spin-chains over a wide temperature range using only a single pair of hardware qubits. Then, through classical simulations, we explore the representational power of two versions of sto-qMPS ansatzes for larger and deeper circuits and establish empirical relationships between the circuit resources and the accuracy of the variational free-energy.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Entanglement and charge-sharpening transitions in U(1) symmetric monitored quantum circuits

Monitored quantum circuits can exhibit an entanglement transition as a function of the rate of measurements, stemming from the competition between scrambling unitary dynamics and disentangling projective measurements. We study how entanglement dynamics in non-unitary quantum circuits can be enriched in the presence of charge conservation, using a combination of exact numerics and a mapping onto a statistical mechanics model of constrained hard-core random walkers. We uncover a charge-sharpening transition that separates different scrambling phases with volume-law scaling of entanglement, distinguished by whether measurements can efficiently reveal the total charge of the system. We find that while Rényi entropies grow sub-ballistically as $\sqrt{t}$ in the absence of measurement, for even an infinitesimal rate of measurements, all average Rényi entropies grow ballistically with time $\sim t$. We study numerically the critical behavior of the charge-sharpening and entanglement transitions in U(1) circuits, and show that they exhibit emergent Lorentz invariance and can also be diagnosed using scalable local ancilla probes. Our statistical mechanical mapping technique readily generalizes to arbitrary Abelian groups, and offers a general framework for studying dissipatively-stabilized symmetry-breaking and topological orders.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2022

Holographic simulation of correlated electrons on a trapped ion quantum processor

We develop holographic quantum simulation techniques to prepare correlated electronic ground states in quantum matrix product state (qMPS) form, using far fewer qubits than the number of orbitals represented. Our approach starts with a holographic technique to prepare a compressed approximation to electronic mean-field ground-states, known as fermionic Gaussian matrix product states (GMPS), with a polynomial reduction in qubit- and (in select cases gate-) resources compared to existing techniques. Correlations are then introduced by augmenting the GMPS circuits in a variational technique which we denote GMPS+X. We demonstrate this approach on Quantinuum's System Model H1 trapped-ion quantum processor for 1$d$ models of correlated metal and Mott insulating states. Focusing on the $1d$ Fermi-Hubbard chain as a benchmark, we show that GMPS+X methods faithfully capture the physics of correlated electron states, including Mott insulators and correlated Luttinger liquid metals, using considerably fewer parameters than problem-agnostic variational circuits.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Transitions in the learnability of global charges from local measurements

We consider monitored quantum systems with a global conserved charge, and ask how efficiently an observer ("eavesdropper") can learn the global charge of such systems from local projective measurements. We find phase transitions as a function of the measurement rate, depending on how much information about the quantum dynamics the eavesdropper has access to. For random unitary circuits with U(1) symmetry, we present an optimal classical classifier to reconstruct the global charge from local measurement outcomes only. We demonstrate the existence of phase transitions in the performance of this classifier in the thermodynamic limit. We also study numerically improved classifiers by including some knowledge about the unitary gates pattern.

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arXiv2022

A matrix product operator approach to non-equilibrium Floquet steady states

We present a numerical method to simulate non-equilibrium Floquet steady states of one-dimensional periodically-driven (Floquet) many-body systems coupled to a dissipative bath, called open-system Floquet DMRG (OFDMRG). This method is based on a matrix product operator ansatz for the Floquet density matrix in frequency-space, and enables access to large systems beyond the reach of exact master-equation or quantum trajectory simulations, while retaining information about the periodic micro-motion in Floquet steady states. An excited-state extension of this technique also allows computation of the dynamical approach to the steady state on asymptotically long timescales. We benchmark the OFDMRG approach with a driven-dissipative Ising model, and apply it to study the possibility of dissipatively stabilizing pre-thermal discrete time-crystalline order by coupling to a cold bath.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Holographic quantum simulation of entanglement renormalization circuits

While standard approaches to quantum simulation require a number of qubits proportional to the number of simulated particles, current noisy quantum computers are limited to tens of qubits. With the technique of holographic quantum simulation, a $D$-dimensional system can be simulated with a $D{\rm -}1$-dimensional subset of qubits, enabling the study of systems significantly larger than current quantum computers. Using circuits derived from the multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA), we accurately prepare the ground state of an $L=32$ critical, non-integrable perturbed Ising model and measure long-range correlations on the 10 qubit Quantinuum trapped ion computer. We introduce generalized MERA (gMERA) networks that interpolate between MERA and matrix product state networks and demonstrate that gMERA can capture far longer correlations than a MERA with the same number of qubits, at the expense of greater circuit depth. Finally, we perform noisy simulations of these two network ansätze and find that the optimal choice of network depends on noise level, available qubits, and the state to be represented.

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arXiv2021

Entanglement dynamics in hybrid quantum circuits

The central philosophy of statistical mechanics (stat-mech) and random-matrix theory of complex systems is that while individual instances are essentially intractable to simulate, the statistical properties of random ensembles obey simple universal "laws". This same philosophy promises powerful methods for studying the dynamics of quantum information in ideal and noisy quantum circuits -- for which classical description of individual circuits is expected to be generically intractable. Here, we review recent progress in understanding the dynamics of quantum information in ensembles of random quantum circuits, through a stat-mech lens. We begin by reviewing discoveries of universal features of entanglement growth, operator spreading, thermalization, and chaos in unitary random quantum circuits, and their relation to stat-mech problems of random surface growth and noisy hydrodynamics. We then explore the dynamics of monitored random circuits, which can loosely be thought of as noisy dynamics arising from an environment monitoring the system, and exhibit new types of measurement-induced phases and criticality. Throughout, we attempt to give a pedagogical introduction to various technical methods, and to highlight emerging connections between concepts in stat-mech, quantum information and quantum communication theory.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Field theory of charge sharpening in symmetric monitored quantum circuits

Monitored quantum circuits (MRCs) exhibit a measurement-induced phase transition between area-law and volume-law entanglement scaling. MRCs with a conserved charge additionally exhibit two distinct volume-law entangled phases that cannot be characterized by equilibrium notions of symmetry-breaking or topological order, but rather by the non-equilibrium dynamics and steady-state distribution of charge fluctuations. These include a charge-fuzzy phase in which charge information is rapidly scrambled leading to slowly decaying spatial fluctuations of charge in the steady state, and a charge-sharp phase in which measurements collapse quantum fluctuations of charge without destroying the volume-law entanglement of neutral degrees of freedom. By taking a continuous-time, weak-measurement limit, we construct a controlled replica field theory description of these phases and their intervening charge-sharpening transition in one spatial dimension. We find that the charge fuzzy phase is a critical phase with continuously evolving critical exponents that terminates in a modified Kosterlitz-Thouless transition to the short-range correlated charge-sharp phase. We numerically corroborate these scaling predictions also hold for discrete-time projective-measurement circuit models using large-scale matrix-product state simulations, and discuss generalizations to higher dimensions.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

The Variational Power of Quantum Circuit Tensor Networks

We characterize the variational power of quantum circuit tensor networks in the representation of physical many-body ground-states. Such tensor networks are formed by replacing the dense block unitaries and isometries in standard tensor networks by local quantum circuits. We explore both quantum circuit matrix product states and the quantum circuit multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz, and introduce an adaptive method to optimize the resulting circuits to high fidelity with more than $10^4$ parameters. We benchmark their expressiveness against standard tensor networks, as well as other common circuit architectures, for the 1D/2D Heisenberg and 1D Fermi-Hubbard models. We find quantum circuit tensor networks to be substantially more expressive than other quantum circuits for these problems, and that they can even be more compact than standard tensor networks. Extrapolating to circuit depths which can no longer be emulated classically, this suggests a region of advantage in quantum expressiveness in the representation of physical ground-states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Gate-tunable heavy fermion quantum criticality in a moiré Kondo lattice

We propose a realization of Kondo-lattice physics in moiré superlattices at the interface between a WX$_2$ homobilayer and MoX$_2$ monolayer (where X=S,Se). Under appropriate gating conditions, the interface-WX$_2$-layer forms a triangular lattice of local moments that couple to itinerant electrons in the other WX$_2$-layer via a gate-tunable Kondo exchange interaction. Using a parton mean-field approach we identify a range of twist-angles which support a gate-tuned quantum phase transition between a heavy-fermion liquid with large anomalous Hall conductance and a fractionalized chiral spin-liquid coexisting with a light Fermi liquid, and describe experimental signatures to distinguish among competing theoretical scenarios.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Reply to Comment on "Discrete Time Crystals: Rigidity Criticality and Realizations"

This is a reply to the comment from Khemani, Moessner and Sondhi (KMS) [arXiv:2109.00551] on our manuscript [Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 030401 (2017)]. The main new claim in KMS is that the short-ranged model does not support an MBL DTC phase. We show that, even for the parameter values they consider and the system sizes they study, the claim is an artifact of an unusual choice of range for the crucial plots. Conducting a standard finite-size scaling analysis on the same data strongly suggests that the system is in fact a many-body localized (MBL) discrete time crystal (DTC). Furthermore, we have carried out additional simulations at larger scales, and provide an analytic argument, which fully support the conclusions of our original paper. We also show that the effect of boundary conditions, described as essential by KMS, is exactly what one would expect, with boundary effects decreasing with increasing system size. The other points in KMS are either a rehashing of points already in the literature (for the long-ranged model) or are refuted by a proper finite-size scaling analysis.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2021

QED driven QAOA for network-flow optimization

We present a general framework for modifying quantum approximate optimization algorithms (QAOA) to solve constrained network flow problems. By exploiting an analogy between flow constraints and Gauss's law for electromagnetism, we design lattice quantum electrodynamics (QED) inspired mixing Hamiltonians that preserve flow constraints throughout the QAOA process. This results in an exponential reduction in the size of the configuration space that needs to be explored, which we show through numerical simulations, yields higher quality approximate solutions compared to the original QAOA routine. We outline a specific implementation for edge-disjoint path (EDP) problems related to traffic congestion minimization, numerically analyze the effect of initial state choice, and explore trade-offs between circuit complexity and qubit resources via a particle-vortex duality mapping. Comparing the effect of initial states reveals that starting with an ergodic (unbiased) superposition of solutions yields better performance than beginning with the mixer ground-state, suggesting a departure from the "short-cut to adiabaticity" mechanism often used to motivate QAOA.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Realizing a dynamical topological phase in a trapped-ion quantum simulator

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 Honeywell's 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.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Holographic dynamics simulations with a trapped ion quantum computer

Quantum computers have the potential to efficiently simulate the dynamics of many interacting quantum particles, a classically intractable task of central importance to fields ranging from chemistry to high-energy physics. However, precision and memory limitations of existing hardware severely limit the size and complexity of models that can be simulated with conventional methods. Here, we demonstrate and benchmark a new scalable quantum simulation paradigm--holographic quantum dynamics simulation--which uses efficient quantum data compression afforded by quantum tensor networks along with opportunistic mid-circuit measurement and qubit reuse to simulate physical systems that have far more quantum degrees of freedom than can be captured by the available number of qubits. Using a Honeywell trapped ion quantum processor, we simulate the non-integrable (chaotic) dynamics of the self-dual kicked Ising model starting from an entangled state of $32$ spins using at most $9$ trapped ion qubits, obtaining excellent quantitative agreement when benchmarking against dynamics computed directly in the thermodynamic limit via recently developed exact analytical techniques. These results suggest that quantum tensor network methods, together with state-of-the-art quantum processor capabilities, enable a viable path to practical quantum advantage in the near term.

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