arXiv subjects

Brian J. J. Khor

Publications and source records attributed to Brian J. J. Khor.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Preparing High-Fidelity Thermofield Double States

A major promise of quantum computers is the controlled preparation of many-body quantum states beyond the reach of efficient classical computation. Among the most important targets are thermal mixed states and their thermofield double (TFD) purifications, which play central roles in quantum many-body physics and quantum gravity. For target systems with a bounded energy spectrum that obey the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), we present a parent Hamiltonian built from two copies of the target Hamiltonian and ultra-local couplings between the copies, which we argue is gapped with a ground state that approximates a TFD state of the target Hamiltonian. By adiabatically evolving down from strong coupling, we can thus prepare a high-fidelity TFD state. We study two variants of the parent Hamiltonian using numerical methods in two classes of models: mixed field Ising models in one and two dimensions and non-local "spin Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev'' models. In the simpler variant, the parent Hamiltonian ground state has high overlap with a TFD for system sizes accessible to near-term quantum devices. However, the global overlap decays exponentially with the number of qubits, with a small error per degree of freedom. The second variant introduces an additional penalty term which can be tuned to reduce or remove the decay of the overlap with system size. Together with a general ETH-based analysis, these results suggest a broadly applicable method for TFD preparation that is not limited to particular temperatures or geometric locality.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Engineering many-body quantum Hamiltonians with non-ergodic properties using quantum Monte Carlo

We present a computational framework to identify Hamiltonians of interacting quantum many-body systems that host non-ergodic excited states. We combine quantum Monte Carlo simulations with the recently proposed eigenstate-to-Hamiltonian construction, which maps the ground state of a specified parent Hamiltonian to a single non-ergodic excited state of a new derived Hamiltonian. This engineered Hamiltonian contains non-trivial, systematically-obtained, and emergent features that are responsible for its non-ergodic properties. We demonstrate this approach by applying it to quantum many-body scar states where we discover a previously unreported family of Hamiltonians with spatially oscillating spin exchange couplings that host scar-like properties, including revivals in the quantum dynamics, and towers in the inverse participation ratio; and to many-body localization, where we find a two-dimensional Hamiltonian with correlated disorder that exhibits non-ergodic scaling of the participation entropy and inverse participation ratios of order unity. The method can be applied to other known ground states to discover new quantum many-body systems with non-ergodic excited states.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2024

Confinement and Kink Entanglement Asymmetry on a Quantum Ising Chain

In this work, we explore the interplay of confinement, string breaking and entanglement asymmetry on a 1D quantum Ising chain. We consider the evolution of an initial domain wall and show that, surprisingly, while the introduction of confinement through a longitudinal field typically suppresses entanglement, it can also serve to increase it beyond a bound set for free particles. Our model can be tuned to conserve the number of domain walls, which gives an opportunity to explore entanglement asymmetry associated with link variables. We study two approaches to deal with the non-locality of the link variables, either directly or following a Kramers-Wannier transformation that maps bond variables (kinks) to site variables (spins). We develop a numerical procedure for computing the asymmetry using tensor network methods and use it to demonstrate the different types of entanglement and entanglement asymmetry.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Stirring by Staring: Measurement Induced Chirality

In quantum mechanics, the observer necessarily plays an active role in the dynamics of the system, making it difficult to probe a system without disturbing it. Here, we leverage this apparent difficulty as a tool for driving an initially trivial system into a chiral phase. In particular, we show that by utilizing a pattern of repeated occupation measurements we can produce chiral edge transport of fermions hopping on a Lieb lattice. The procedure is similar in spirit to the use of periodic driving to induce chiral edge transport in Floquet topological insulators, while also exhibiting novel phenomena due to the non-unitary nature of the quantum measurements. We study in detail the dependence of the procedure on measurement frequency, showing that in the Zeno limit the system can be described by a classical stochastic dynamics, yielding protected transport. As the frequency of measurements is reduced, the charge flow is reduced and vanishes when no measurements are done.

quant-ph↗