arXiv subjects

K. S. Collins

Publications and source records attributed to K. S. Collins.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Engineering dynamically decoupled quantum simulations with trapped ions

An external drive can improve the coherence of a quantum many-body system by averaging out noise sources. It can also be used to realize models that are inaccessible in the static limit, through Floquet Hamiltonian engineering. The full possibilities for combining these tools remain unexplored. We develop the requirements needed for a pulse sequence to decouple a quantum many-body system from an external field without altering the intended dynamics. Demonstrating this technique experimentally in an ion-trap platform, we show that it can provide a large improvement to coherence in real-world applications. Finally, we engineer an approximate quantum simulation of the Haldane-Shastry model, an exactly solvable paradigm for long-range interacting spins. Our results expand and unify the quantum simulation toolbox.

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arXiv2022

Observation of Stark many-body localization without disorder

Thermalization is a ubiquitous process of statistical physics, in which details of few-body observables are washed out in favor of a featureless steady state. Even in isolated quantum many-body systems, limited to reversible dynamics, thermalization typically prevails. However, in these systems, there is another possibility: many-body localization (MBL) can result in preservation of a non-thermal state. While disorder has long been considered an essential ingredient for this phenomenon, recent theoretical work has suggested that a quantum many-body system with a uniformly increasing field -- but no disorder -- can also exhibit MBL, resulting in `Stark MBL.' Here we realize Stark MBL in a trapped-ion quantum simulator and demonstrate its key properties: halting of thermalization and slow propagation of correlations. Tailoring the interactions between ionic spins in an effective field gradient, we directly observe their microscopic equilibration for a variety of initial states, and we apply single-site control to measure correlations between separate regions of the spin chain. Further, by engineering a varying gradient, we create a disorder-free system with coexisting long-lived thermalized and nonthermal regions. The results demonstrate the unexpected generality of MBL, with implications about the fundamental requirements for thermalization and with potential uses in engineering long-lived non-equilibrium quantum matter.

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arXiv2020

Quantum Approximate Optimization of the Long-Range Ising Model with a Trapped-Ion Quantum Simulator

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.

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arXiv2019

Observation of Domain Wall Confinement and Dynamics in a Quantum Simulator

Confinement is a ubiquitous mechanism in nature, whereby particles feel an attractive force that increases without bound as they separate. A prominent example is color confinement in particle physics, in which baryons and mesons are produced by quark confinement. Analogously, confinement can also occur in low-energy quantum many-body systems when elementary excitations are confined into bound quasiparticles. Here, we report the first observation of magnetic domain wall confinement in interacting spin chains with a trapped-ion quantum simulator. By measuring how correlations spread, we show that confinement can dramatically suppress information propagation and thermalization in such many-body systems. We are able to quantitatively determine the excitation energy of domain wall bound states from non-equilibrium quench dynamics. Furthermore, we study the number of domain wall excitations created for different quench parameters, in a regime that is difficult to model with classical computers. This work demonstrates the capability of quantum simulators for investigating exotic high-energy physics phenomena, such as quark collision and string breaking.

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